Van's home | Larkin's Home | Quotes of the Day
Proper studio lighting with two or three stands and a couple of soft boxes, whether based on a single power pack or monolites, is going to cost at least a couple of thousand bucks, which I didn't have. I probably didn't have the money to do what I've done, but it's all been one piece at a time so I could at least pretend to afford it. Here's a view from the door of the studio, which is actually a 10x12-foot kit storage building behind our house.
At the back is a hanging piece of grey fabric with a small quilt pinned to it. (This piece is actually by Deborah Calkins, one of the Three Uppity Women along with Larkin.) Dead center is a Bogen/Manfrotto tripod, a 3021 leg set and a 3047 head, with a Nikon F4s leveled up to shoot. I replaced the standard K focusing screen in the F4 with the E screen, which is a fine ground glass with an etched grid - a huge help in centering and squaring up rectangular artwork. Yes, there is miscelaneous junk stored behind the backdrop, those are the springs of a rollaway
Bracketing the tripod are two light stands. Each stand holds a four-tube four-foot fluorescent fixture. Each fixture has four "full spectrum" tubes, two each designed for 5000°K light and two for 6500°. The combination yeilds extremely good color using Fujichrome Sensia 100. I bought basic 25-foot extension cords and cut off the outlet end, using those for the power source - you can see a bit of the orange cords heading off to the wall from the tops of the lights.
The stands were built with 2x3 CVG fir, not exactly cheap stuff but reasonably light and strong, standing on simple plywood bases. (Details below) The lumber cost about $60, I think, the fixtures were $45 each, the 8 tubes were about $9 each. With casters, cords, and miscelaneous hardware, this probably totaled around $225 and a day's effort.
Above is the front of the stand, I probably should have rounded the corners of the bases, and the screws holding the casters on are just a little too long. Side view is below. I think these should be pretty easy to duplicate from the photos, feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions.
Note: When I'm shooting art that requires slides, I tend to shoot both slides and digital. My digital camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so using a 60mm MicroNikkor on the digital gives me a 35mm-equivalent 78mm, not much different than the 90mm Vivitar Series One macro lens I use on the film camera. That means I don't have to move the tripod much between the two formats. However, it's more cost effective to just shoot digital and make slides from your best corrected shots. As it happens, I do that too: 35mm Jury Slides from Digital