Lighting help please?
 

Hi All,

Someone over on the MusicRadar forum mentioned the PhotoRadar forum, so here I am seeking help and advice.

I need to take quite a few photographs of a guitar collection and would like help with what lighting to go for. I would like to photograph the guitars against a black backdrop as they are all light or bright in colour. I know a little about continuous lighting with softboxes but very little about the off camera flash, umbrellas and so on.

The budget isn't massive, around the £150 to £200 mark. I've seen continuous lighting kits on eBay and listed on a few websites but really unsure what type to go for, flash or continuous.

Any help would be most welcome.

Cheers
Barry

Your budget isn't really sufficient to buy much in the way of photographic lighting kit Barry, and I'm not sure that it's worth spending in any case for a task like this.

Given that you already know a bit about continuous lighting I would suggest that you use a few normal indoor lights placed appropriately so as to show off those aspects of the guitars you want to bring out. You could diffuse, bounce or flag the lights using sheets and similar to prevent excessive shine and blown highlights (and to keep the light off your background).

The main thing to watch for if you do this is to close the curtains so that you don't have daylight coming in as this will give a colour cast if you are not using daylight balanced bulbs. You should try to use all of the same type of bulbs in your lights so they are the same colour temperature and set the colour temperature in your camera to match. If you're not sure which is the right colour temperature, take a few test shots at different settings and go with the one that looks best on the playback screen.

Good advice from Eileen.. Stick with it and save your cash..

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

There are a fair number of "lighting kits" on eBay in the £150 bracket, 50x70 softboxes with up to 1000 watts of light. Are you saying they're not worth buying, no good for the job?

Cheers
Barry

[QUOTE=BarryH;2706]Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies.

There are a fair number of "lighting kits" on eBay in the £150 bracket, 50x70 softboxes with up to 1000 watts of light. Are you saying they're not worth buying, no good for the job?

Cheers
Barry[/QUOTE]

I honestly don't know if they're good or not. Sorry.