A couple of weeks ago I looked at old photos. Some images showed old friends and a very few even myself. I looked at them and got a little sentimental. I decided to take more images of my friends in the future. As almost all amateur photographers I´m a real gear head and so I searched the internet for studio strobes, portrait lenses and some other stuff I would need to take some portraits. Finally I found a "starter"-kit which included 2 powerfull strobes ( 500W ), lights stands, umbrellas and a large soft box for "just" 2.000.-EUROs. I went to my dealer and he ment that I should consider a third strobe for the background ( another 500.- EUROs ). Beside the absolutely ridiculous price I thought that it would be a pain to set up this equiment as we don´t have a spare room in our flat. It would take me at least an hour to set up the background, light stands, strobes and umbrellas and another hour for the large softbox.

I had a problem! At this time a friend of mine decided to sign in for a photo sessions and he persuaded me to do the same. The session was held by a professional photographer. When he saw our cameras and lenses he got a little jealous. Nothing compares to the equimpent of rich amateur photographers.

But this session was great! The best thing we learned was: How to built up a low budget studio. The next day I went to the store to buy the cheapest flash and a sensor to trigger this flash with the built in flash of my camera. But the sales guy showed me an even cheaper and simpler solution. A flash that looks like a large light bulb and fits into a standard light socket. Hence it runs with AC power and that saves you money and helps protect our environment. This flashlight has a light trigger built in so nothing else is needed. It has no controls and you can´t control it´s output. It´s just full power but you can vary the light by changing the distance to your subject.

This wonderful device comes from China and sells for 29.-EUROs. The only drawback is it´s recovery time of 5 seconds. If you want to shoot fast sequences you need to spend something around 500.-EUROs for a real studio strobe. I also bought a cheap dark grey background fabric and a light stand for my SB800. I spent 100.- EUROs in total to get my little studio!

The image above was done the first time I tested my new studio. I placed my SB800 on a light stand about 1 meter in front and 0,4 meters above my model. I used a tissue over the SB800 to soften the light. This is the cheapest and smallest soft box of the world but and it really works! I screwed the flashbulb in one of our bedside lamps and placed it in front of the background. I set the camera and the SB800 to full manual and took a test shot. It was almost perfect! I used the histgram to fine tune exposure and vola! I got perfectly exposed and pin sharp studio shots.

The image is not perfect: There is a small shadow under the nose and another shadow caused by the glasses as I used only one strobe. The posing is not perfect ( I already bought a book about posing to get better images next time ) but most important my model ( my wife ) likes it and the shot is untouched! I didn´t do anything in photoshop at all.

I´m very happy with my little low budget studio. Meanwhile I got another two China flashes so that I can use two flashes to lit my model and another one for the background. The SB800 will stay in my bag or maybe I will use it as a hair light?

settings: M-Mode, 1/100s@f8, Nikon SB800 on tripod in manual mode, YinYan 300SD flash for background, WB 4800 Kelvin