You know how you never have enough lights to do the shot you want? Today I am going to solve this problem once and for all. I'm going to show you how to get all the light sources in the world for just a few bucks. How? With LEDs.

Lighting with LEDs is a ton of fun. It is also a great way to practice lighting. Why? Because LEDs are cheap. Having a ton of LEDs allows you to position a huge amount of light sources on any miniature detail oriented given setup - Provided that the setup is small enough.

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There you have it. You managed to convince your wife/hubby to spare some space under the kitchen table where you can do your photo business without interruption. You have managed to scrounge up some bed sheets for backdrops. What's next? Next is the really big thing that will instantly convert your den to a fine studio after hard labor and learning will give you the ability to take wonderful photographs. Light!

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How do you take a lovely portrait like this, on a perfect white background? Of course you'll need a beautiful model. But how would you handle the lighting? Just throw about 10000 Watts/Seconds on your seamless white and you're good. 

Or use a single strobe and 5$ worth of white Coroplast. Read on for the full details. 

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Once we have explored location and a few basic backdrops options we are going to hit lighting. The backdrop assignment will be up next. However, I thought it would not be fair to do the first assignment without even a little bit of home lighting discussion.

After all, light is the substance from which your photograph is made of.

There are several lighting options if you are building up your home studio: Tungsten, Halogen, Florescent, small speedlites and the big canons - studio flashes. Each with its vices and merits. I will dedicate a full post to explore the several options. But just to get things started, I wanted to discuss the most available light of all: Available Light.

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Photographer James Burger walks us through a 108 seconds journey of converting his bedroom into a studio and back. And he does that stop motion, no less. (If you are reading this via RSS, you may want to click the post to see the full vid). 

More after the jump.

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My gift to you readers for DIYP 3rd Year Aniversarry - 43 Photography Hacks, Mods And DIY Projects. (And some shameless self promotion)

Light Modifiers

1. Homemade Speedlite "Snoot"

2. The Best Softbox Ever

3. Using A Cooling Honeycomb As A DIY Gridspot

4. The DIY Speed Strap

5. The DIY Speed Strap - Accessories And Samples

6. Kimel’s Pop Up Flash Soft Box Diffuser

7. Drinking Beer - Out! Snooting - In!

8. Striplight and Softbox

9. Gel Holder for Flash

10. V Cards

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The following guest is written by Matt Haines (site, blog, Flickr). After surfing his awesome Flickr stream, I asked him if he'd like to share his mojo with DIYP readers. I should have known better. Now I am trying to find a new lighting trick to make my face look less red.

I’d like to thank Udi for inviting me to do a guest blog posting (my first!). Initially when he asked me to write about V-cards, I thought…huh? V-cards? Just a couple of foam panels taped together, what’s the big deal?

But Udi is wise. Oh he’s a wise one alright. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there’s plenty to say about such a simple—and cheap—light modifier. They’re so simple, the DIY construction part is hardly worth mentioning. Although I’ll mention it anyway. But it’s not how you build your V-card, it’s what you do with it. And you can do a lot!

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When I just started exploring artificial lighting, I had no strobes. I had no light stands and had no nothing. Yea, when I was your age, we use to walk barefoot to school. In January. When it snowed. *cough* *cough* sorry. Something just took over me. 

Anyway, when I just started lighting, I looked for the cheapest light that I can afford. Halogen seemed like a good choice. It was cheap and it could be plugged in even cheap light stands. With some baking paper, it ever provided some diffused light. [Image by fangleman].

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A few weeks ago I stumbled across Sandra Freeman's photography site. I was captured by her stunning life-like flower images. I then asked Sandra to share her photography ideas with DIYP readers.

Gladly for us, she agreed.

I was surprised to learn that Sandra is using nothing but one window as light source, and nothing but black fabric and some foam core board as studio. Then again, Sandra shows us all that there is no need for fancy studio equipment to take great shots - all you need is good brains. Just like the Spraying Flowers tip, it can not get any simpler.

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If you've been reading DIYP for a while now, you know that I am a fool for home made softboxes.

DIYP has featured all kind of softboxes, ranging from small light weight camera strobe to big studio photography strobes. Some are minutes to build and some are hours. Here is a list of some of the better softboxes we've had here on DIYP:

- The Best Softbox Ever (Image is from this project by Nick Wheeler)

- Two Great Weekend Projects - Striplight and Softbox

- Even Better Softbox Part One - The Build Process

- Even Better Softbox Part Two - The Test Results

- a home grown softbox

- Flash Mounted homemade DIY Softbox

One of the trickier parts of growing a softbox at home is the planning. The delicate work done by professionals to calculate the lengths of segments. The gentle work of trigonometry to calculate the angels. Light-less nights spent in dark basements with calipers.

(Actually it is the drawing of the the
individual pieces before you glue them together that is the real hard task)

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