My main style of photography has always been, on-location with available light. I like to capture the moments in the natural environment they happen in. That doesn't mean I never play around with studio lights. I occasionally setup all my backgrounds and lights somewhere in my little house and take pictures of my kids or dogs. I love shooting in the studio, but having to set all the gear up and break it down is a real bummer. My ultimate goal is to own or share a real studio space sometime in the future.
For 2009, one of my photography commitments is to do more studio work. Part of that includes getting everything I need to setup a small studio, on-location at a clients house. The equipment needs to be portable, (relatively) quick to setup and pet/baby proof. After a bunch of research and a bit of trial and error, I think I finally found my solution, the Lastolite Hilite background.
The Hilite is basically a giant collapsible softbox (6' x 7') that is used to create a pure white background. You place a strobe or two inside the Hilite and they light the thing up like the sun. Traditionaly, to create a pure white background it required a white backdrop (usually paper) and a couple of strobes to fire directly at the background to make it pure white. This technique requires lots of space to get it right and is not very flexible. With the Hilite, it is ultra simple to get a white background in a very small space. Your subject can even move all around your set including right up against the background and it still works. This is key when shooting kids or dogs since they move around a lot.
So I recently purchased the Hilite and put it through its paces. As advertised, it was simple to setup and after a few failed attempts to get it folded again, I figured it out. Getting the background to go pure white was simple. Getting the floor to go pure white was a-whole-nother thing. Along with the Hilite I purchased the optional white vinyl train that is supposed to allow you to shoot full body shots and have both the background and floor totally white. I found this not to be the case without additional strobes or significant post-processing. No matter what I did, with my simple setup the floor was always a nasty gray. After additional research I found a wonderful tip on the internet by Zack Arias. The trick was to pick up a couple sheets of white tile board from home depot. The tile board is shiny so it ends up reflecting the light from the Hilite background and you get the added bonus of it creating a beautiful reflection of your subject. Once I added the tile board, the setup was simple and results were excellent.
Here is the basic setup in my living room.
