Indoor Portrait Lighting

[Beauty Through a Lens]

I been doing portraits (outside) using natural lighting and I want to start doing them inside as well using a greenscreen. I am aware I will have to take courses and light the greenscreen sepertaley but far as the subjects goes does this (http://www.amazon.ca/CanadianStudio-...x+lighting+kit) set have what I need to start to light my subject? I want them to be able to stand as well as sit down I don't want to be limited. I want to be able to light 1-4 people at a time. My roof is 10 ft high.

I will be new to doing this indoors so any suggestions will be helpful.

[Manfred M]

Adrian - this is somewhat like a previous question you posted, and I suspect you may not have liked my answer then either.

I would be rather surprised if you managed to not tear your hair out with this setup in trying to shoot people and give up in frustration (nicely said, don't throw your money away on this stuff).

I've done some chromakey work (i.e. the technical name for green screen / blue screen), but in video, rather than with stills. And I did this work in a commerical studio with dark, neutral walls and, high ceilings (5m / 15') and lots of space to work in; it was probably about 10m deep and 12m wide. This Amazon setup is probably going to work for small inanimate subjects, but not for what you are planning to do. You'd likely have to spend at least 10x as much and probably more to have good enough gear to pull off what you are trying to do. That assumes you have a studio to use it in too.

A headshot for a single subject, perhaps a bit more, perhaps you might be able to pull it off with this gear; but full body shots for up to four people, no, it is not realistic to think you can do that. The light sources are simply too small and the light modifiers in the kit are not appropriate for this type of work. The muslin backdrop is probably the last material I would use; the stuff wrinkles too easily and even ironing it between uses can only do so much. Practically, this means you will be fighting shadows from the wrinkles all the way. I'd go for green seamless instead; just tear it off and throw it out when it becomes too beat up.

In chromakey work, you have to light the background quite evenly, so that it is easy to select in post. You need your subjects to be at least 3m / 10ft (more is better) away from the screen and then you have to light them separately. Get them too close and you will get bleed through from the lights hitting the screen, which is a PITA to deal with. The lights need to be far enough away so that they don't encroach into your shot, but that being said, a bit of encroachment can be taken out in post. You'll have to flag the lights so that they do not direct any unwanted light onto your subjects.

The next step will be setting up the lights on your subject in such a way that they do not impact the lights hitting the green screen (hint - inverse square law at work). You have to set up your light(s) that hit your subjects and light them properly (a key light and fill light), Your camera setup will likely be a good 3m / 10ft away from your subjects; more for the larger groups.

Before you try to get into a fairly complex area of photography, I suggest you get your studio portraiture skills up to snuff and then add chromakeying at a later stage. I get the impression that you think this type of photography is fairly trivial; it is anything but.

If you had the money to do this, I would suggest getting studio strobes that are in the 500 W-s range as a minimum. I'd look at lighting the green screen with strip boxes that are hidden behind v-flats to flag them and then set up a standard light as a key light. If you want to do larger groups, I suspect you might have to hit the green screen with light from the top and bottom as well. The top light would have to be on a boom stand. If you are interested in what the low end, but decent gear would run you, look at the following:

http://www.paulcbuff.com/b1600.php

This is what a lot of amateurs and even some pros use / got started with before the went to the ProPhoto or Elinchrom studio lights. It blows the cheap eBay kit right out of the water; probably the value for the money right now; about 1/4 of what the lower end commercial units run at.

You could get away with a medium softbox for a single subject, but would need a large one for full body shots once you get into the the larger groups and full-body shots. I like octaboxes for the key light, because of the way they drop off and the round catchlights that they produce. A rectangular fill light would be fine, but that's just personal taste. I can't ever see using umbrellas; their light spill is too difficult to control for this type of work.

You'll probably also want to invest in a flash meter to help set up your lights, especially the ones on the green screen.

[rpcrowe]

+1 for Manfred

[HaseebM]

Get the Elinchrom to-go set. Decent entry level strobes.

[Manfred M]

Get the Elinchrom to-go set. Decent entry level strobes.

Elinchrom makes some decent gear, I like the Skyport and their light modifiers, but am less convinced of the value of their lights. The Alien Bees setup I spec'ed are less than half the price of the Elinchrom starter kit and I prefer my PocketWizards because I can use them with Speedlights as well..