I am very fortunate to have a large basement in our new home. Finally I got the chance to build a permanent studio in the basement. In this video you can see the creation of the studio. There was some painting and carpet laying required to make the room hospitable. The process took about three months, but it was not that much work. Due to other obligations I only could do a few hours per week. If I had concentrated on the project exclusively, I think it could have been finished within a week.
Here is a list of the equipment I now have installed:
- background system with black/white/grey cloth
- two tripods with white umbrellas and Speedlight-mounts (strobist setup, this is what I used in the studio until now)
- two tripods with Quantuum R600+ digital studio flashes (600 Ws)
- two soft boxes 80×120 cm
- one 70 cm beauty dish
- four Yongnuo RF-603 wireless flash trigger units
I got the studio flashes, soft boxes and the beauty dish from a Polish retailer (www.quantuum.pl). It is, by the way, the same company which also runs a webshop called www.foto-tip.pl. They are the guys who distribute the Samyang lenses (you might remember my 8 mm fisheye ?).
The shopping experience was strange at first, but came out very nice. You start filling your cart and then click on “Proceed to checkout”. Then you only get a message stating that an employee will contact you. I was a little surprised since I expected a checkout which shows you the shipping cost and everything for a last check. Then I had some emails going back and forth since the beauty dish I wanted originally was not in stock. But then it went quickly. Paypal, and the package went out the same day via UPS. Another day later I had the equipment. The shipping cost were moderate. The stuff came in 2 huge packages, and they charged 17 Euros (from Poland, that’s not much for an international shipment).
P.S.: Merry Christmas !
