After a good few years using various rooms and the odd photographic studio I now have my own made to measure studio, the main benefits being…in-house, take up where you left off and permanent LED lighting.

Until my son Scott moved out of our converted garage, pieces to camera in a studio setting were a pain to produce as I had to film them in the living room.

This is the converted garage just before we set to work re-painting and gyp rocking the window.

My plan was to be able to produce medium wide shots either sitting down or standing up to white, black and green and have the ability to produce full length green screen shots when needed.

A studio is better without external light like a window so the window area was partitioned with wood and gyp-rocked with 12.5mm boards to give an extra sound barrier.

I bought a roll of white vinyl lastolite as you can see above and that extends along the floor for about 6m if needed. Sadly the lastolite green screen paper as seen above is not so good and a temporary replacement with a green screen bought at the Digital Juice Company.

I now intend to buy a large green screen for those full body shots when needed.

Lighting from the front is produced by three 500w LED Fellonies and the ability to dim remotely is a blessing. I still use my Gekko Kelvin Tile for fill in and colours.

This is a recent production against black as the lastolite super black foldout is perfect for this type of shot due to its nature there is no reflectance from the type of cloth used in the lastolite.

To date we have eight permanent LED lights in the studio generating little to no heat, the roof mounted lights are now fitted with magenta filters as they were affecting my all over colour balance with green spiking.

All the lights can be moved on tracks but not up and down although I am working on this.

 

Pac shots are a breeze with the new setup like this recent publication I photographed using the Gekko Kelvin Tile on green, lit from the side to giving this book about Celtics Sean Fallon a corporate colour look.

The main time saver for me in the whole process is not having to de-rig after a days filming I can carry on where I left off and thats a major plus in my books.