Pye Jirsa from Lin and Jirsa Photography and SLR Lounge dispels the idea that making a great home studio is expensive. In this 20-minute video, Jirsa explains how you can make a quick studio at home for as little as $20.
Though the whole video is 20 minutes long, much of it is spent going through a post-production regimen. You only need about 3.5 minutes to glean all the info you need to make that cheap studio in your own home.
Jirsa’s steps are fairly straightforward. First, you need to find a door that leads outside. The goal here is to take advantage of the bright, flat light that is generated during the day. Next, get a background. This is where that $20 comes in, as Jirsa recommends purchasing a large multi-sided reflector for this. As a note, that reflector is going to be far more useful than just in this application. Every kind of photographer and videographer has a use for a reflector in some capacity with nearly any shooting situation, so the $20 is going to go a long way.
Multi-sided reflectors will zip open to allow you access to those extra reflectors, and the interior of those reflectors is a translucent mesh called a scrim. Pye says that scrim will serve as a great background in this application.
The next step is to place your subject in front of that scrim and use that diffused ambient light as your background. From there, the last step is to just dial in your settings to your preferred look and take the photo.
The next 15 minutes of the video are spent explaining post-production methods to get the most out of a photo you would take in this setup and is certainly worth a watch. If you liked this video, you can get more tips from Adorama’s YouTube channel here.
(via SLR Lounge)