LED light setup for studio photography

[holliscx]

Photographers, I'm looking for a rock solid LED light setup to shoot studio shots for book cover concepts and photo illustrations for editorial (newspaper & magazine) assignments.

I just shot the two pics below for a book cover on gentrification with a Galician friend who's a photographer. Knowing me, he said flash is over my head (too technical, too much fluffing around) when I can go LED and you shoot what you see i.e. WYSIWYG. Sounds simple to me but my only hesitation is this is an influencer setup. Literally when you google LED lights the copy reads great for vloggers!

For example, if I'm going to buy a tripod I buy a Manfrotto. I'm a graphic designer first and photographer second. I can't be troubled with learning a complicated light setup with myriad technical variables. My preference is natural light but I need to be able to setup a decent indoors lighting scenario on a table and bang something out myself but I don't know what "gear" I should buy. I'd rather buy the right setup the first time and be done for the next couple decades. I want the Manfrotto or Canon 5D Mark IV of LED lights if this exists.

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[Mark Walberg]

I'm looking for a set of lights for my copy stand.
I'm looking at these.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/C...1/N/3715154809

Although I've not tried them, I'm told that they work well by Peter Krough. He has a great source of info about copying things with a camera.
He's easy to find on the net.
You need to check the CRI of the lights to get a reasonably even spectrum.
A step up would be a dichroic LED. The advantage of those is that you can control the temperature of the light to bring out the colors the way you want them.
However, a lot of that can be done with setting white balance in the camera or with post imaging software.

I hope your leg is doing well, by the way.

Addend:
I see that the link went a whole list of many lights.
The ones I'm looking at are the Smith Victor ones that cost $149, 3rd one down the list.
I already have a copy stand to put them on.

[bigbill]

I am in no way a lighting engineer type, but I'm the Chief Engineer at a cabinet factory where we maintain a "color room" to check the finish on doors. We paint or stain about 12,000 doors a day and take periodic sample doors to the color room to check against the standard. We have strict standards on the bulbs, we still use fluorescent, because of the wavelengths effect on color. I hope we are able to use LED bulbs in the future.

[false_aesthetic]

It's a big help to understand your budget.

A single Arri LED panes can cost $25k+ but you can also buy a cheap kit for $200. The difference is light output, color consistency and evenness. While you can create custom white balance for your specific light set-up, I've found that cheaper lights can have a color shift from the center to the outside. This leads to some funky adjustment layer gradients in PS.

Additionally, consider if you'll need light modifiers -- do you want the light to be flat? do you want the light to fall off as it passes over the object? Do you need hard light for highlights? Those things will dictate what lights you buy, etc.


If you're willing to look at fluorescent lighting, Smith-Victor offers a 3-light softbox kit for around $700 USD. I'm unsure of the current offerings but back when I was teaching photo, this is what'd I'd recommend to students looking to buy their first pieces of lighting gear on a budget. The idea is that they could get decent results for a low investment while they figured out working in the real world.

[holliscx]

I hope your leg is doing well, by the way.

Hey, thanks. I'm three years post surgery which I was always told was the goal. Going back 1 1/2 years (3 MRIs) my doctor had been saying for over a year that something small is growing in the same spot where he operated on me. He said it was growing minimally and that we have to continue to monitor. A couple weeks ago I had an MRI and followup visit. This time he said, "You're good ... I'm not worried about." "Great news, right?" "Yep." I pried and got him to say "the small thing growing" is still there but that it had only grown 1mm tops and he wasn't worried about it. Another MRI in 6-8 months. Same drill.

I don't know what role Covid 1984 may have played e.g. he said they're only operating on malignant tumors so I wouldn't have been operated on anyway. I was 100% expecting him to say, "Ok, I'm going to have to operate on you a second time ... here's approximately when." Now surgery is out of my head completely. I can't do the grueling mental what if exercise anymore. I fully expect him now that surgery is the furthest thing from my mind to do a 180 next time that he's going to operate.

But I can't complain. Leg's not perfect by any stretch. It changed my life but I can design, photograph book covers, ride my bike, look at German shorthaired pointer puppies in Romania (we promised our kids their first dog), etc. in other words life is good.

Re: lights those setups aren't quite what I'm looking for ... I need to work larger sometimes but thanks for the thought. I'm a B&H disciple.

It's a big help to understand your budget.

Right after I clicked send I went to Manfrotto's site and discovered they make lights. I had no idea. I want Manfrotto LEDs.

If anyone has time can you suggest this LED light, tripod, and anything else I need like I don't know what constitutes a basic lighting setup?

I sent this pic below to my friend and he said I could go as simple as an iphone for lighting but he doesn't think this will quite cut it for me. Is the Lykox with a soft box x 2 too much light for my needs? I don't see much in between



https://www.manfrotto.com/us-en/prod...ng/led-lights/

Budget for Manfrotto, whatever it takes. I want to buy the right setup once and have it serve me for the next 2 decades.

Importantly, I'm not shooting portraits of babes or presidents. Just concepts for book covers and editorial illustration which always fit on a table or sheet of paper so I work pretty small.

edit: @false_aesthetic I googled your last recommendation and arrived here. I don't think this is what you were suggesting but this is way more light than I need right? I wouldn't know what to do with this. I'm intimidated.

https://smithvictor.com/product/octa...with-boom-arm/

[Bobonli]

You might want to Google "LED light panels video" Folks have been using these for video work for awhile, though as someone else suggested the color temp variation tolerances might be different in video from what you are after; in other words, what a videographer might tolerate in terms of variation might not be what you're willing to tolerate. Have a look here, this guy used to write and review a lot of light panels, though he's in a different income bracket than me!

I wonder if Manfrotto is making their own lights or putting their label on them. I don't think they have a long history in the light business, definitely in stands and supports but I think lighting is relatively new.

I just bought a Lume Cube set up because of all the video conferencing I must do now. Perhaps it's not quite what you're after but it did arrive fast, at what I think is a fair price and the light works as advertised. 1/4-20 threads mean I can attach it to a lot of things. I particularly like the little display on the back that shows power remaining % of light and color temp. Only downside is I think they might be generous with battery estimate: I got about an hour at 55% before it shut off but I hadn't completely charged it, just took it out of the box and used it. Next time I'd run it off an actual plug, not the battery.

[holliscx]

I love this https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...light_kit.html mainly to see, ok, so you've got this light panel so what tripod and head goes with that down to the nitty gritty detail. I would prefer just two lights I think and although that case is sweet I don't need it as I'll always shoot at home.

I guess I just want a sweet lighting kit that would be a no brainer for what I need. As far as color accuracy and LEDs more suited to video, I find there's so much leeway with raw files in lightroom and pshop that I never open what I think I'm going to get anyway but can usually get to an acceptable or even better result with tinkering. So I think I'm ok in that regard and will learn to plan for a degree of color shift.

[Bobonli]

I love this https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...light_kit.html mainly to see, ok, so you've got this light panel so what tripod and head goes with that down to the nitty gritty detail. I would prefer just two lights I think and although that case is sweet I don't need it as I'll always shoot at home.

I guess I just want a sweet lighting kit that would be a no brainer for what I need. As far as color accuracy and LEDs more suited to video, I find there's so much leeway with raw files in lightroom and pshop that I never open what I think I'm going to get anyway but can usually get to an acceptable or even better result with tinkering. So I think I'm ok in that regard and will learn to plan for a degree of color shift.

That's nice. Until you read the 4th review about the batteries! But if you're working at home, just plug it in.

[COVRTDESIGN]

I was a professional photographer for years as well as a combat photojournalist. I have worked with Joe McNally on quite a few occasions and worked with all Nikon strobes as well as very high end lighting equipment.

Since then, I have been doing some video lighting for youtube videos of food preparation and I had a very small budget for lighting. I decided to build my own LED setup as seen on youtube for fun while I built up savings for some lighting. I have been incredibly surprised with the lighting output for sunlight recreation around sunset time and would highly recommend making one of these as a very cheap and effective DIY led light.