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Studio Lighting – The Ghetto Studio

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Just Fab has come up with a great PVC contraption she calls the Ghetto Studio. It’s a great and portable setup that takes great Glamuor shots.

I asked Just Fab to share her plans and setup and she kindly agreed. Below you will find the instructions to build such setup. Total cost is less then 40$.

We have showed a PVC setup before, but it was very big. This PVC setup can be used both indoor and outdoor. The bottom and top are tiltable, covered with Ripstop nylon. Bottom hasa car windshield screen as a reflector. The strobe goes behind the topscrim and bounces off the bottom to reflect up. Instant one light setupto do butterfly lighting. I did have to glue some of the piecestogether to keep it from falling over in the wind, but it’s modular andtears down. The bottom screen tilts about 1/16 the way down, the top istilts in the middle. I can reverse those is need be. You simply shootin between the two.

Here is an image taken with this setup. Look for shadows under the eyes. Found any? No!

just_fab_ghetto_studio_00.jpg
Sweetness by Just Fab

The next following images show the materials you need to create this Ghetto Studio, as well as assembly needed.

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Photo Studio Compression Pole

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usefulguy from DIYPhotography’s Instructables group has posted a pretty neat Instructable explaining how to make a photo studio compression pole. It kinda reminds me of the hardware store light-backdrop stand, but it is even easier to use.

The good news is the cost: all the parts cost 9.43 at Home Depot. Real cheap for an all purpose studio stand.

To make a good thing better, he even has a video showing how one can use the pole in a studio:

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Shooting Heavy Bikes with a DIY Strip Light

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Reader Peter Boden a great photographer in general and a Bike photographer in particular have a neat way to creatively light his subjects – among them a BMW K1200 RS. Without a doubt a subject that needs respectful handling. Not an easy subject to light – highly reflective curved surfaces, combined with black-matte-light-absorbing surfaces. Not an easy task. But wait, there is more. Since we are talking Heavy Bike here, just lighting will not make the cut. Once you have achieved acceptable lighting, you want to make sure you convey the right emotion.[Read More…]

DIY Photograhy Studio Lighting – Ringlight

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This great studio ringlight tutorial is a guest post by Carl Edouard Denis from www.cedenis.com, who aside from building monster studio lights, and taking pictures, also DJs. A jack of all trades.

Let me start off by listing all the items you will need to make your light. If you are a regular DIYfer or tinkerer, you may already have many of the items on this list.[Read More…]

Studio DIY – Softboxing The World – A Home Grown Softbox

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A softbox is a studio thingy that professional photographers use on their studios. Why? for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, softboxes create a smoother light – less hotspots (yea – those are the bright, burnt our noses in your photos), anther is smoother shadows. Most professional models are shot with softboxes to get that glamorous, look. Softboxes are also great for macro shots – they produce even diffused light.

The only trouble starts when you head down the road to the store and want to get one of them nice wonders. They usually cost something like a small county side house. In this article I will demonstrate how to build a homemade studio softbox for just a few $$.[Read More…]

The Origami Studio (An Extrapolation to The $0.02 Macro Studio)

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This post on a 2 cents macro studio got me thinking. Firstly because it is a great idea, it employs the same technique as the super simple light tent and the flash diffuser. Secondly it is cheap. So cheap in fact, that it really does only cost two cents. The thing that I was thinking is – “I want a BLT Sub”, and right after “This is great for small objects, what if I want to shoot something bigger? For this I came up with an improvement – The Origami Macro Studio. It is not as cheap – approximately 20 times more expensive – but for 40 cents, it is still a heck f a deal. And as the macro studio, it is cheap, takes 2 minutes to prepare, and very simple.[Read More…]

DIY – Make a Free Light Stand Out of an Old Tripod

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If you need a better way to hold the light you use while taking pictures with the DIY backdrop you just made, or you need a better way to control where light goes for keying out backgrounds in Photoshop, read through this tutorial on how to make a quick and durable (and highly configurable) lightstand out of one of those old, sort-of broken cheap tripods you have sitting in your closet. Even if it’s your main tripod, you should be able to modify it so you can swap it for a lightstand or standard tripod pretty easily.[Read More…]

DIY – Studio Equipment: Greenscreens and Backdrop Stands

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This article will explain how to design and assemble bluescreens, greenscreens and backdrops for photos and video, as well as how to easily and inexpensively build a portable frame to support these backdrops out of PVC pipe or metal conduit. The ideas are similar to the ones that proposed by Brian Zimmerman, with a nice fresh view and clear explanations. (NOTE: Please be sure to read some of the extra notes at the bottom of this guide for optimal performance).

For amateur or hobbyist photographers and video producers, coming up with the money for a nice, $200 (and up!) backdrop and the expensive stands and hangers required to help support it isn’t very easy. Rather, they need a way to make a nice-looking background that is both good looking and easy to transport.[Read More…]

Studio Lighting – Flash Mounted homemade DIY Beauty Dish or From Soup Dish to Beauty Dish

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Do you know why they call this piece of studio equipment “Beauty Dish”? Because it make people look beautiful. The idea is similar to other diffusion ideas – the more diffusion you put in your light, the softer the image is. This idea is widely deployed in photography studios – the softbox, the beauty dishes and the reflector disc all work on close principles.

The unique thing about a Beauty Dish is the way that it diffuses light – unlike a softbox or a reflector which has an “illuminating” surface the beauty dish has a circle of light with an opaque center. Now, what all this has to do with soup. You will soon find out.[Read More…]

Studio Lighting – Homemade Cheap Flash Diffuser (DIY)

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In this article Aron Brand will demonstrate how, using homemade and accessible materials, you can improve the light quality of a simple slave flash, and get a natural and soft light. This sort of light is good for jewelry photography, shooting items for eBay and portraits. Note the picture at the end of this article, not only showing softer shadows, but also pops the look of the metal, giving it more polished, expensive look. Similar methods to obtain the same effect can be a light tent, of a flash mounted softbox. Good luck.[Read More…]

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