Originally Posted by
LabRat
Your present lenses are fine for most stuff, and you will see that longer lenses will not see the edges of the background as easily as with short WA lenses...
Having some long lenses allows you to get close to smaller detail areas with the camera to subject distance increased, but needs a lot of bellows extension to focus close... Beautiful DOF falloff in that range... (Typical 4X5 studio FL'S are 150mm (for larger stuff) to 420mm for tight shots and details...)
Generally today, most stuff is lit with a soft box or tent... But a single light with reflector cards works well...
Get some white foam core and make a set of reflectors, from big folding panels, to small thin strips that can be near the front of fill areas on the deck of the set that are just outside of your frame... You can cover some reflector with foil if you need a hot fill sometimes...
I avoid using seamless for a background, as it is expensive these days, but prefer different color fabric... Getting a piece of velvet or duvateen is helpful to kill an area into black...
A digital incident meter with 1/10th stop resulution is very useful to even out lighting...
A lot of info in those Amphoto pro photo books, now very cheap used...
You will always be compensating for bellows factors shooting on small sets, so learn them throughly...
So here is some basic stuff to start with... Ask questions as you go...
Have fun!!!
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