Photographers who would like to start a photo studio are primarily searching for the right place. However, which spaces are ideal for setting up a photo studio? Do you need to renovate further? Are you going to hire a professional? Or are you going to do a DIY project with family and friends? If so, do you have the essentials tools to get the work done? Or would you need to purchase the best impact driver and other power tools?
Setting up a studio can be daunting, but it can be done with less stress through thorough planning. Of course, the requirements are different depending on the type of shoot you want to do there and whether it is done professionally or as a hobby, but there are many similarities.
Photo Studio For Beginners
Location
Every real estate agent knows the saying about the three most important criteria for evaluating a property (“location, location, location”). The location also plays a major role in a photo studio.
Basically, a distinction should be made between photo studios that have walk-in customers and those where customers only come with a fixed appointment.
In the case of the former, a location in a pedestrian zone or the like, where many potential customers pass the shop window, makes sense.
If customers only come to order or are mainly served industrial or advertising customers, a location in a commercial area with good transport connections and sufficient parking spaces makes more sense.
The distance from your own place of residence must also be taken into account, as this distance must be covered every time you drive to the studio.
Dimensions of the room
For photo studios in which people (full body) are to be photographed, a minimum room height of 3 meters is advisable, otherwise you will have too many problems hanging up the background systems.
Background boards are 2.70 or more wide. So that there is still enough space for the flash tripods, a room width of at least 5 meters is required.
The length of the room should be at least 6 – 8 meters so that you can achieve a sufficient recording distance.
The aforementioned dimensions apply to people photography. If cars or other things are photographed, the recommendations are of course completely different.
Other considerations in the room:
- Window. Some photographers like to work in daylight photo studios, in which case large windows are of course helpful. As a rule, however, daylight is avoided, so windows are more of a hindrance or are masked.
- Blanket. What color and texture is the ceiling? Can I attach ceiling mounts for studio flashes?
- Walls. Most photographers choose white as the wall color in the photo studio , sometimes the walls are also painted gray or black. Any kind of color does not make sense because you get unwanted color casts from light reflections in the photos. With white walls, you always have to expect scattered reflective light. If you want to avoid that, you hang the white walls with black molton or paint them black straight away. To be honest, I would feel uncomfortable in a studio painted black, so the walls in my studios have always been white.
- Access. A large entrance on the ground floor is helpful if, for example, a customer wants to be photographed with his motorcycle in the studio. The transport of bulky things is also made much easier. If, on the other hand, the studio is on the 3rd floor, a spacious (cargo) elevator is very valuable.
Daylight or artificial light studio?
As a rule, when you think of a photo studio, you tend to think of working with studio flashes. But a daylight studio is also conceivable. If the studio has large windows and you can mainly do your photo shoots during the day, it is quite conceivable to operate the photo studio as a daylight studio. In any case, you are more independent of the time of day and the incident light with light guidance through flashing or continuous light.
Daylight. In a daylight studio, you only need a few brighteners to guide the light in order to reflect the light falling from the windows. You don’t necessarily have to use the relatively expensive brighteners from California Sunbounce, for example. Simple styrofoam sheets or the like do it too, because the sheets do not have to be folded to save space for transport.
Light technology – steady light. A few years ago, permanent light systems had the major disadvantage that they produced a lot of heat and were very limited in terms of light exploitation.
Today, however, LED panels and permanent light lamps are available that hardly get warm and are sufficiently bright. Only with the choice of the light shapers are you still somewhat limited compared to flashes.
