# Advice on inexpensive lighting for taking adult photo at home please



## fishburger (Dec 13, 2016)

Hello, there is an area in my apartment that could be used for photo shoot. As it is in the middle of the apartment, there is no lighting. Even I turned on nearby lights, that area is still dark. The wall is white and I want to take photo of adult standing making various poses. Besides those expensive lights sold in photography stores, what suggestions do you have? Can I use those inexpensive light stand (about $30-50) from Home Depot or Walmart? What kind of light bulb do you recommend? How about LED white light? At what lumens should I get?


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## photo1x1.com (Dec 13, 2016)

Hey there, welcome to the forums.
First of all I would stay away from LED lights that are not made for photography, if you want to create color images. For black&white they are fine, but they have a strong color cast that is sometimes impossible to get rid of .
Second: any light other than flashlight is rather dark, so if you want to photograph with continuous light, you will need quite a lot of it.
What budget do you have for all the lighting equipment together? Keep in mind that sometimes it is better to save a bit of money and buy some decent equipment. I know what I´m talking about. I very often made some DIY gear that wasn´t all that cheap, but ended up buying the real thing sooner or later. With lights it is more about the light shapers like softboxes, reflectors, etc.. Those are more difficult and sometimes even impossible to create for big and especially hot lights.
Just to be clear: with adult, do you mean nude?


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## Designer (Dec 14, 2016)

fishburger said:


> Besides those expensive lights sold in photography stores,


They are not all expensive.  You can find flashguns for as little as #26.99.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=photo&field-keywords=flash


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## fishburger (Dec 14, 2016)

Thanks.

Budget: Ideally less than US$100 but if not possible and cannot get a decent result, no more than $200?

No nude. I mentioned adult to give forum members an idea of the size of the objects.


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## weepete (Dec 14, 2016)

Yonguno flashes are pretty decent for the price


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## fishburger (Dec 14, 2016)

weepete said:


> Yonguno flashes are pretty decent for the price



Which model do you recommend?

I forgot to mention that I use an iPhone 6s+ (with Wide lens from Moment) to take the photos and videos. The flashes may not be compatible.


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## Designer (Dec 14, 2016)

fishburger said:


> I forgot to mention that I use an iPhone 6s+ (with Wide lens from Moment) to take the photos and videos. The flashes may not be compatible.


You can make it work.  Make sure whichever flashguns you purchase will have a "slave" function.  Set them up on stands, and when you fire your iPhone flash, the flash(es) on stands will fire as well.  Easy to do.


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## photo1x1.com (Dec 14, 2016)

Designer said:


> fishburger said:
> 
> 
> > I forgot to mention that I use an iPhone 6s+ (with Wide lens from Moment) to take the photos and videos. The flashes may not be compatible.
> ...



I don´t know about the iPhone6s+, but I just went and tried it with the iPhone4. Most of the time my flash didn´t fire at all and two times they didn´t fire at the right time and so the image was dark. I tried Nissin i40, Elinchrom BX500 and Elinchrom ELB400. All of them worked fine with other flash (e.g. fire one another).
I would definitely do some reading before I purchase any of the flahes for use with an iphone.


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## fishburger (Dec 14, 2016)

Designer said:


> fishburger said:
> 
> 
> > I forgot to mention that I use an iPhone 6s+ (with Wide lens from Moment) to take the photos and videos. The flashes may not be compatible.
> ...



By "it", which product and model do you mean? How many do I need? Does the flash on the phone activate the flash(es) on the stands?


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## KmH (Dec 14, 2016)

Just a hot shoe flash unit without a good size light modifier, like a 45" convertible umbrella, will cause sharp edged shadows which are not very flattering for most kinds of people photos. 

Impact Convertible Umbrella - White Satin with Removable Black Backing - 45"
Impact Umbrella Bracket
Impact Light Stand, Black - 6' (1.8m)

Two lights often works better than just 1 light:
Impact Digital Flash Umbrella Mount Kit


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## chuasam (Dec 17, 2016)

for adult photos, you want softer lighting.
Grain is fine.
you get this atmospheric voyeurish view...kinda like Helmut Newton and his protege Ellen von Unwerth.


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## fishburger (Dec 20, 2016)

Is it a good idea to use the following products to make the room bright?

All-Pro 2500 Lumen LED Portable Work Light-WL2540LP - The Home Depot

Cooper Lighting Lighting AL3050LPCGY All-Pro LED 3100 Lumen Area Light | ATG Stores


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## TrolleySwag (Dec 21, 2016)

You might be able to use those. I would bounce those lights off of the walls. Here's a pic of me bouncing 2 Yonguo 560s off of a wall 






Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk


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## fishburger (Dec 21, 2016)

Haven't been to a photography shop yet but I was in a hardware store. I got a Husky worklight with tripod. It has two LED each of which is 7000 lumen with 5000K white color. When I turned them on, the shooting area was brightened but there are strong shadows on the wall. Is that the reason "bouncing light off the wall"? What is the best way to do so? Facing the LED away from the object and using white umbrella? 

Is it better to go to a photography store to buy those mentioned by you guys than to use the Husky worklight?


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## Derrel (Dec 21, 2016)

Yes, "work type lights" are very bright, very powerful, but they do cast rather strong, hard-edged shadows. Indoors, a common way to make the light softer is to "bounce" that light off the ceiling, or off of a wall, or off of a corner where the wall and ceiling meet, or off of a white door. try to keep direct light from the light units from directly striking people, or there will likely be hard shadows.

By bouncing the light off of a ceiling or wall, it hugely INCREASES the size of the light source! Look at the beautiful light quality that TrolleySwag achieve by bouncing two flash units off of the indoor walls!


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## fishburger (Dec 21, 2016)

Are two LEDs with 7000 lumen with 5000K white color each good enough? Shall I keep the Husky worklight or go to a photography store to buy two sets of light bulbs and white umbrella?


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## Derrel (Dec 21, 2016)

Window screen frames can have thin, whie fabric stretched over them, to create "*scrims*". The advantage to photographic lights is that they typically have some way to hold umbrellas steady, so the light can be shined through the umbrellas. If you do not have umbrellas, consider making some do it yourelf scrims or diffusing panels, or home-made boards. Or use 4 lengths of PVC pipe, and four elbow joints to make a frame, and cover the frame with thin, white material, and shine the light through that.

Placing a large scrim, with frosted mylar, or tracing paper, or white fabric (nylon or rayon are common today, thin silk was common 60 years ago), in front of a BRIGHT light souce is a very old way to make beautiful photos.

Look into *scrim lighting*, or *diffusion panels*, on YouTube.


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## fishburger (Dec 22, 2016)

Thanks. If I want to also take photos of myself with large metallic objects, is there any additional products that I will need?

I tried to take photos of two large computer desktop towers made of metals. Imagine the scene that two large metal computer cases placing next to each other. I am taking photos of the front view and perspective view. The gap between the two cases are about 10-15 cm wide. When I took the photos, I found several blocks of large shadows cast by the towers in the gap. Some wires from the towers also cast shadows on the desk. Anyway to get rid of those shadows? Sometimes I just want to take photos of the two towers. Sometimes I want to take photo of myself behind the towers. Any good advice appreciated.


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## Designer (Dec 22, 2016)

fishburger said:


> Are two LEDs with 7000 lumen with 5000K white color each good enough? Shall I keep the Husky worklight or go to a photography store to buy two sets of light bulbs and white umbrella?


Since we are not there with a light meter, it is going to be hard to say if they are "good enough".  When you look at the lights, they seem fairly bright, even though a flash (which lasts only for a fraction of a second) is actually brighter, you just don't see the brightness of it due to the fast action.

It is that very fast flash that helps to keep your portraits sharp, as it "freezes" any movement from your model.

Using continuous lighting (work lights, room lights, window light, or photography lights that do not flash) is going to be hit or miss, as you really don't have enough light to "freeze" any motion.

Also, by bouncing your lights off a wall is going to yield less light "power" on your model, which is another reason to use the more powerful flash type lights.


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## Derrel (Dec 22, 2016)

To avoid Shadows between nearby objects the easiest way to do that is to make sure the light comes at a fairly frontal angle and does not create a shadow. Secondly Shadows are either soft-edged or hard-edged, depending upon how much diffusion there is in front of a studio light or worklight. If the Shadows you have are too hard and too sharp at the edges, the light needs more diffusing material. Diffusing material softens the light by making the effective Source larger. The same thing happens when a light is bounced off of a wall or ceiling, the light source becomes larger and softer. In terms of easy to work with lighting electronic flash units are actually pretty good. Look at the nice photos above-- those photos are done with what is called Bounce lighting. Some work type lights use pencil shaped quartz halogen lamps in those, which caused hard shadows, and almost absolutely demand diffusing or bouncing to get acceptable lighting for many subjects.


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## fishburger (Dec 23, 2016)

Thanks. I shall try various materials. On the internet, there are some videos to show using software to remove the shadow. In general, is it a good idea to do that? Will the edited photos still considered to be authentic?


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## greybeard (Dec 24, 2016)

I don't own nor have I ever used an iPhone but if it works like every other cell phone camera I've seen, it doesn't have a built in strobe but has a LED that comes on just before you take the picture and goes off shortly after.  This probably won't work as a strobe trigger and I doubt there is any connection from the phone that will let you hardwire it to strobes.  So, continuous lights will have to do.  Point whatever light sources you get at the walls and not at the subject.  This will give you indirect lighting and will be the most flattering.


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## Designer (Dec 24, 2016)

Thanks, greybeard, I thought those lights were strobes.


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