What Type of Lights to Use for Photo Shoot

Series Summary

Studio portraits can cost a fortune and they are hardly ever as perfect as you think they should be, especially if you’re a discerning photographer. You would take such photos yourself, but that would mean figuring out flashes, lights, handheld light meters, reflectors, all of the equipment of professional photography that can seem so daunting to even an advanced amateur. Expert Village is here to break down these mysteries of the photo studio and turn you into an accomplished portrait photographer in your very own studio. Not only will he tell you all the equipment you need, but Rob Mitchell shares his techniques for lighting a model to make her look as glamorous as the beauty pageant contestants and supermodels he has shot over his long professional career.

Not sure what type of lighting is best for the photo shoot you have in mind? Our expert discusses the pros and cons of different kinds of lights and how to position them in your studio. He gives detailed advice on fill lighting and back lighting and tells you how to tweak both through the effective use of umbrellas and reflectors. Need a refresher course on flash power packs and setting the white balance on your camera? Expert Village has your answers right here in these videos, along with tips on how to pose your model and how to create the perfect windswept look.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Rob Mitchell on behalf of Expert Village. Today we are going to be starting off our series on setting up your photo studio and lighting with a general look at some of the different tools that we have to work with. In our studio, the most common thing to use is the studio flash or the strobe. We will be getting into that, but at first we are going to start with the tungsten light. Not very practical and not really a lot of people are lighting with tungsten in these days because of certain drawbacks. Mainly, the heat that comes off it, and it's not quite as bright as a studio strobe. But we are going to start off with the tungsten light because it is going to let you see the changes in the light as we move it around the model's face, move it closer, use reflectors. You'll actually be able to see those. After you've mastered and completely understand what's going on with tungsten, then we are going to go into the studio and we are going to use the studio strobe. The strobe has a modeling light which lets you have some sort of an idea of what you are getting when you are lighting your subject, but it's not really as easy as when you are using a tungsten light. Therefore you've got to understand your strobe light, you've got to understand when you move it around your model and place it in different places, exactly what you're going to get. So we are going to get to all that. We are going to cover umbrellas, we are going to cover reflectors. A lot of this stuff gets very expensive. You can go to a lot of the camera stores and you can drop an awful lot of money very quickly. I'm going to show you a couple of little tricks that is going to save you a few dollars, too, and still make you looking really professional. We'll get into lighting kits, again, different types of umbrellas, the studio strobe, the power pack, the difference between the power packs, why you might want one over another. The light meter, your best friend, although today with digital cameras you don't have to go out and spend a lot of money on a light meter. You can just use your digital camera, keep checking on the back, and when you get the right exposure, that's it. But there are a lot of inexpensive light meters, too, that you can check out. Lighting stands, different sizes, portablilty, weight, what you should look for, as well as tripods. Tripods start anywhere from ten dollars for a little mini tripod that you can put on your table, up to hundreds, well, even thousands of dollars. I don't think you'll really need to go that high for what your going to be doing. But, I'm going to show you some that are really light weight, your going to be able to travel with, even stick it in the suitcase. Little mini ones that we can take with us, you can put them on top of a mailbox to shoot, on top of logs if you're shooting outdoors in the forest. So, it's all the versatile things that we can use here. So, we're going to get right into it. Stay tuned."