I’ve asked myself the following question tonight:
“Can anyone replicate the works of a professional studio with nothing but 2 flash guns, and a small reflector?”
Well tonight I set myself the challenge to find out!!! My goal was to replicate at least 80% of a professional studio’s quality on a budget, and what you see below are some results.
The Setup:
This idea came to my mind when I was looking for some lighting solutions to shoot a few items which i was thinking of selling online. But when I found this I thought to myself, “Hmmmmm, it’s nothing but 4 white walls for $100!!!”.
So I traveled two steps to the left of my computer to find my own little mini studio, which is my new cupboard I bought from IKEA not so long ago. So I cleared all the junk from the top self to set myself up.
From the setup shot below, I placed one flash gun inside the shelf so that the light will bounce evenly throughout the shelf, and then used a little reflector and another flash gun to act as an umbrella.
The Result:
As you can see it took a few trial and errors to get to my final shot which is a borrowed 1Ds Mark III (Why I didn’t use it to take the shots?? I don’t know!!!). The first 2 shots of the Leica was what I initially came up with, but as you can see the result wasn’t even 70% there!!! The shadows were still quite strong. So when i got around to shooting the 1DsMKIII, I’ve pumped up the power on flash gun (+1) I was holding with the reflector.
When you click on the links below you’ll be able to compare my results to a few professional shots.
Compare above with a similar Professional Image image provided by www.dpreview.com
Compare above with a similar Professional Image provided by www.canon.com.au
Post Processing:
For all shots: the usual level, curve and sharpening.
But for the last one I’ve gone all out to white out the background.
Final Thoughts:
So what do you reckon eh? I was pretty happy with the result in trying to replicate a professional shot given the circumstances. I’ve learnt alot from this experiment and I’ve saved myself a couple hundred dollars not having to purchase extra equipment
by kevinyiu
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