Lighting suggestions for home based photography studio

Well with the at home lock down on the horizon, I'm looking for a at home project and thinking about converting a spare room into a studio.  What over head lighting are you using in your studio?   Currently the room has 8 overhead recessed lights 43w.  

Would you move to fluorescents?  

There was a trend to use single tubes in studio but I didn't
go for it. I did try successfully 4 tubes behind a silk diffusor
paper… but that lasted just a few weeks.

I came back to flash and modifiers.

OK, good to know.  So you don't rely on the over head lighting at all?  Which would work out good for me.  I can keep things the way they are.  Less money to spend on converting those.  

My recently built (last year) home studio is in an 18 X 26' former bedroom on the second floor of my home. There was, and still is, one ceiling light in the center of the room that I'm keeping as a work light. It's a new LED fixture. I now have six 10' long ceiling mounted backdrop rollers (added 3 more after these photos) mounted close to and parallel with one of the 18' walls. Spaced out from them, I have four fabricated 1x1 x 1/8" ten foot long steel angles with 1/2" pipe nipples welded to each end (It pays to be able to make and weld). I threaded 1/2" floor flanges onto these nipples to allow attaching the angle assemblies to the ceiling. The one closest to the backdrops is 6" away and parallel with the backdrops. I use this one for clipping smaller temporary backdrops, or sometimes to attach a speedlight to use as a hair light. The other three of these steel angle assemblies are spaced out across the ceiling about 3-5' apart, but also parallel with the backdrops. I use these for attaching microphones and LED lights for video work. I picked up some electrical beam clamps from Lowes that attach easily to the angles, and they have pre-threaded 1/4" holes that allow attaching photo lighting spigots to them easily. These beam clamps are also available with 5/16" and 3/8" threaded holes. The beam clamp/spigot assemblies then get attached to the steel angles wherever I wish to hang a light, then the light gets attached to the spigot. I have some 12" long pieces of chain and D ring snaps that I loop over the angle and a frame member of the light to perform a "safety chain" function, preventing a light from falling in case the spigot attachment should fail. This is similar to the steps used as a standard stage lighting safety practice.

For attaching soft boxes, I have a friend making me some 1 & 2' long baby post spigots to allow hanging a soft box and monolight or speedlight from these angles using the same electrical beam clamp hardware, but I don't have these yet. I posted photos of the angles, lights and my backdrops before, but I'm recently adding additional backdrop rollers. These older photos have been included. I don't yet have any photos of the latest arrangement, as I am still working on it.

If you do this, and plan on hanging heavier equipment, I suggest increasing the size and strength of your materials, as this setup is not strong enough for heavy lighting equipment, but it seems adequate for my LED video lights and my other smaller lighting equipment. Note also that I have 3/4 plywood attached to the ceiling so as to spread the weight of all this over many of the ceiling beams. The beam clamp is shown with a spigot attached in the third photo. I replaced the included square head bolt that's included with the beam clamp with a thumb bolt, also from Lowes. You don't need to replace these, but you will need a wrench to attach and remove the beam clamps if you don't replace them.  The spigots can be bought in assortments very reasonably from Amazon.

Charley

Kenya See wrote: OK, good to know.  So you don't rely on the over head lighting at all?  Which would work out good for me.  I can keep things the way they are.  Less money to spend on converting those.  

No, I don't because most of my work (corporate, cultural, etc)
is done on location, the rail system would only be useless.

In studio, for catalogues and others, I use stands and booms but
rails are definitely a solution if you plan mostly indoor shoots.



My studio setup

Kenya See wrote: Would you move to fluorescents?  

No, keep it simple with speedlights.

Stick with the studio lights, like Aperture 120D if you can cut the cost.  Very nice light and it doesn't use that much power either because LED.

120D lights are such incredible lights, look on eBay first you can find some deals.  

Fluorescents are the worst, except for the cleaning crew. If the budget is hopelessly low, then I might consider a fluorescent umbrella/grenade for video.

Kelly