Studio Equipment...Please Help

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Permalink Reply by Kevin on July 8, 2009 at 10:59pm

For the money, I don't think you can beat Paul Buff's AlienBee line of lights.

As far as stands, it seems you would need some serious heavy duty ones for all the setting up you'll be doing. I'd probably look into the heavy duty Bogens.

Barn doors will only control where your lighting will go, umbrella's and softboxes will diffuse your light giving you a lot softer light.

Permalink Reply by Ben jones on July 9, 2009 at 5:34am

Agreed with the Paul Buff stuff. Umbrellas are quick and easy to set up/tear down, and muslins take up virtually no room whem compared to seamless paper. I NEVER stuff muslins into a bag like you will hear others proclaim so often. If you fold them neatly you will have about four straight lines in the background to clone out. If you stuff them into a bag you will have several thousand wrinkles running randomly throughout the background that will detract from the image and will be a sure fire give away you are not a professional photographer. Some will respond with "use a large aperture and throw the background out of focus and you won't have any wrinkles" which only shows their ignorance of the use of powerful flash units and close distances to the background like you will be facing. The image below is a 10 x 20 muslin that I had carefully folded the last time I used it, then after I rehung it I cloned out two straight lines, one in the middle and one about 1/3rd of the way down from the top. She was about four feet out from the background.

Ben

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• Katie1.jpg, 130 KB

Permalink Reply by Michelle on August 18, 2009 at 6:09pm

Denny MFG puts out a line of wrinkle free muslins that are fantastic.
In the Paul C. Buff line has anyone bought the cybersync setup yet? I am thinking about it!