The basics for a temporary minimalist still life set-up

One of the things I want to work on this year is doing more still lifes, a style of photography I really enjoy but rarely shoot. I used to live a traditional Japanese house that had wonderful light and textures all around which made it useful for shooting, but now I live in a tiny (standard) apartment. It’s a two bedroom but is only 63m square, about half the average size of a similar one in the US or Canada. The apartment faces west, so for most of the year I get some strong light in the afternoon though the 3 balcony doors which basically make up the entire outer western wall. The room directly adjacent to these doors is the LDK (living/dining/kitchen room), which, aside from the tiny kitchen area, mostly functions as my work/computer/office space. It gets the most light but is too full of furniture to function as a room to do still lifes in. The room right behind it is a traditional 6-mat tatami room (about 9m/98’ square - about the same size as the LDK) and this is really the only room I could use. It is fully open, but has multiple sliding doors to close it in if necessary.

Anyway, what I’m hoping to do is be able to set up my camera/tripod in the LDK area, and shoot into the tatami room. This is the only way to give me some distance from the objects I’m shooting, and/or to give some distance between the background and the objects. I’d have the natural light behind me, diffuse in the mornings but direct in the afternoon. There is a small overhead light in the tatami room but it casts all kinds of shadows.

I’ve never really done any kind of studio photography (or rather, it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve learned), but I’m wondering what is the minimal amount of gear to use? It has to be able to pack down small so it can go into storage when not in use. I’ve got a few small tables that could be used to set up items on. I’m planning on getting a basic backdrop stand and a couple of different backdrops (probably cloth of some sort), but I’m wondering what to do for lights, especially to counter any shadow that I may project onto the set up. I have a couple of tripods and a monopod with feet that could be used - would using a simple off-camera speed light with or without a diffuser, and possibly used with or without a reflector be a good place to start? I haven’t replaced the old flash that I had since it died (although I do have a flash meter), but that’s been something on my to-do list for a while anyway. It’s a small space with white walls and a wooden ceiling so I don’t know if a secondary light would be needed, or if I’ll probably be okay without it.

As usual this is getting long so I’ll stop now. Just looking for advice for a minimalist set up that goes beyond the “just use what you have right now”, which is not working for me anymore. I’m open to suggestions for other online (or other) resources too, although the ones that I’ve looked at so far have been a mixed bag in terms of usefulness.

For lights, I am very happy with these: LED Light Kit
I also use small LED flashlights for accent or point lights. Lots of choices there.
Black velvet and white paper both work for backdrops and don't require much distance.
A backdrop stand can be a simple light stand or an old tripod with angle iron on top to create a T shape.
A small folding table with suitable tops such as wood, cloth, glass, etc. And again velvet or paper.
That is really about all I use for most of my studio work. All of it can be folded or rolled up and put away.

Since still life is rather formal, you have control of subject and light ( in your case determined by time of day) and therefore can manipulate shadows. A picture or sculpture is created through the interaction of light and dark.
That said, the biggest problem is how to give a still life a dynamic composition. In many ways, still life is much more difficult than most other kinds of photography. I admire your pursuit.
You may get a little more freedom using view camera with swings and tilts, but working without them should also be interesting. A photographer has much less control over elements of a picture than a painter. But as with painting, making still lifes should influence your general picture taking.
Experiment!

These will be your friend in a small space.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1465859-REG/godox_ad200pro_ttl_pocket_flash.html

ChristopherCoy said:

These will be your friend in a small space.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1465859-REG/godox_ad200pro_ttl_pocket_flash.html

Click to expand...

Thanks - I'll look into it.

guangong said:

Since still life is rather formal, you have control of subject and light ( in your case determined by time of day) and therefore can manipulate shadows. A picture or sculpture is created through the interaction of light and dark.
That said, the biggest problem is how to give a still life a dynamic composition. In many ways, still life is much more difficult than most other kinds of photography. I admire your pursuit.
You may get a little more freedom using view camera with swings and tilts, but working without them should also be interesting. A photographer has much less control over elements of a picture than a painter. But as with painting, making still lifes should influence your general picture taking.
Experiment!

Click to expand...

Actually, part of the plan is to get my Crown Graphic serviced - I know it doesn't have the same flexibility as a proper view camera, but I thought it would be a good choice for this type of work, especially since more and more places around town are cracking down on tripod use.

@rick shaw Black velvet is exactly what I want to get. I'm not sure about the white paper though, I have little room to store rolls of any kind (very little closet/storage space).

A flash tip: https://www.lightpixlabs.com/pages/q20ii - pretty nice flash with wireless transmitter etc. I have one and I like it!

To be honest, it seems you are getting hung up on the lack of space without first considering the subject matter. IMHO, the photograph has to come first in the process, then you figure out how to execute the photo. A great many still lifes require not studio at all, and many lighting limitations can be handled in the darkroom or postprocessing.

I've done a number of still lifes with available light in very little space with black felt, white paper and an old wok as the backgrounds. We have a room with a skylight and also a room with sliding glass doors. I use black and white film in either medium format and a 4x5 field camera. The wok has a great patina and is a decent size. You can use white poster board as reflectors if needed.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

If you're asking for a the absolute minimum needed, all you really need is a window and a table. Add a piece of white foam core and you have your reflector for a second light source or a white background all in one. Direct western light can be solved by a sheer curtain or moving farther away from the window.

Over the years I have fooled around with setups that use a table top but perhaps my efforts might be closer to "product photography" used to document ceramic pieces, bonsai wannabes, and paintings. I began with 500 watt halogen worklights that came with tripod stands and were ridiculously cheap but gave deeper understanding of the term "hot lights!" I later acquired real light stands and some softboxes using CFLs, plus a rig Smith-Victor made that has a modest counter-weighted boom I can use for overhead key lighting. I just acquired (B&H had a sale) a pair of LED panels that are adjustable intensity and color balance which I will probably move toward, but their acquisition was inspired by a rash of Zoom meetings(!) For most of what I do my preference is to totally control the lighting -- but then I can be a bit obsessive by nature.

My setup has an ancient dropleaf table inherited from an aunt. On the wall behind it I have a piece of semi-rigid electrical conduit with gray and black 54" wide cloth attached to it that can be rolled and unrolled, choosing which color to expose. In my case the "roller" is hung across two open hooks on the wall. The fabric is long enough to drape out over the table to form a sweep. To photograph paintings I can lean a hunk of 1x4 from the table to the wall to support flat artwork. The fabric I use is more of a cotton twill sort of material. I tried some deep blue velvet once photographing a musical instrument with B&W film and perhaps there are different velvets -- this was probably some sort of synthetic fibers -- but the wrinkly array of reflections produced a seriously distracting effect. I suppose that could be tempered by moving it further from the plane of focus.

Anyway, the advice to experiment is good. And probably a good start is not buying much of anything until learning what you can do with what you have. In what's left of my mind 'tabletop photography' potentially includes a rather diverse array of possibilities, so maybe there's something useful here.

This is an iPhone shot of the setup in use for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day last year, I went indoors due to ugly weather plus Covid.

The wooden 'thing' in foreground is my 8x10 pinhole camera (and I made the rectangular pot for the ficus).

If you've got decent room/window light, you should be able to get started without any additional lighting for for simple still lifes.
Foam core board or folding reflectors are incredibly useful for filling in shadows or balancing out the light hitting your subject. White can be used to add light, black can be used if you want to block or minimize the light being reflected off walls or ceiling. I just clamp these to a light stand or tripod to position them where I need.
If color balance is not an issue, you can also use simple hot lights with reflectors like this, which are inexpensive and easy to setup. For still lifes, you don't really need to use strobes or fast shutter speeds.
It's handy to have both light and dark-colored backdrops available, depending on your subject. Cloth seems to be the easiest to use and store. I just buy a meter or two from the local fabric store as the selection of colors/ patterns is infinite and it's a lot less expensive than photography "backdrops".
I highly recommend using your Crown Graphic, even without a lot of movements it's great for this type of photography. Depth of field will be a significant factor, much more so than with smaller formats.
This one was taken with an 8x10 Eastman View camera in my dining room, with just window light coming from behind me and to the left, No backdrop, just off-white walls and ceiling gave me enough fill. I just concentrated on the composition more so than the lighting, but it worked out OK.

Rachelle, what are you planning on photographing?

Here's one with the wok as the background. Illumination was the skylight. I've made many images in the wok printed platinum/palladium, silver-gelatin and digital. If it's an interesting shape and fits in the wok it gets photographed.



http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

jeffreyg said:

Here's one with the wok as the background. Illumination was the skylight. I've made many images in the wok printed platinum/palladium, silver-gelatin and digital. If it's an interesting shape and fits in the wok it gets photographed.

View attachment 265544

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

Click to expand...

Reminds me of Weston's use of a tin funnel to balance the light in "Pepper No. 30".

With all that window light and white walls with small rooms, you might want to think about black 'reflectors' to introduce deeper shadows - you may not need to introduce any more light. The one problem with the camera looking through the doorway is access. You will probably need to adjust the subject a lot and then check the changes at the camera.

If you use fabric for a backdrop/base, having access to a hand steamer can be useful to remove wrinkles.

Something as simple as clamp lamps will give you cheap light. https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Delux...mp+lamp&qid=1612391658&sr=8-9&tag=googhydr-20
They can be clamped to the back of a chair, and store easily. Reflectors can be made of mat board (black or white), and aluminum foil.

Wow, thanks everyone, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I’ll try to take some photos of the room if I can get it a bit more organized- at the moment I’m working on getting rid of some unwanted furniture and replacing it with something better, so things are in a bit of a disarray at the moment. While I really like and enjoy some close-up photography, I’m more interested in trying my hand at more elaborate set-ups, which is why I’d like a bit more room to work with. Even with simple set ups, I’d like more negative space around the objects, if possible. Unfortunately Japanese windows (the everyday ones that most people have, not the old aesthetic ones in temples) are pretty crap, with wires running through them (I guess for earthquake/typhoon protection?) and safety stickers that can’t be removed, so shooting with the window is not really an option.

I found some black velvet I had bought for this purpose many years ago, and @eddie reminded me that I have a clamp lamp somewhere in storage, so I think it may be enough to get an additional light source with wireless transmitter, and a stand to hold my backdrops. Will also get some white and black foam core to help control the light as well.

DWThomas said:

Over the years I have fooled around with setups that use a table top but perhaps my efforts might be closer to "product photography" used to document ceramic pieces, bonsai wannabes, and paintings. I began with 500 watt halogen worklights that came with tripod stands and were ridiculously cheap but gave deeper understanding of the term "hot lights!" I later acquired real light stands and some softboxes using CFLs, plus a rig Smith-Victor made that has a modest counter-weighted boom I can use for overhead key lighting. I just acquired (B&H had a sale) a pair of LED panels that are adjustable intensity and color balance which I will probably move toward, but their acquisition was inspired by a rash of Zoom meetings(!) For most of what I do my preference is to totally control the lighting -- but then I can be a bit obsessive by nature.

My setup has an ancient dropleaf table inherited from an aunt. On the wall behind it I have a piece of semi-rigid electrical conduit with gray and black 54" wide cloth attached to it that can be rolled and unrolled, choosing which color to expose. In my case the "roller" is hung across two open hooks on the wall. The fabric is long enough to drape out over the table to form a sweep. To photograph paintings I can lean a hunk of 1x4 from the table to the wall to support flat artwork. The fabric I use is more of a cotton twill sort of material. I tried some deep blue velvet once photographing a musical instrument with B&W film and perhaps there are different velvets -- this was probably some sort of synthetic fibers -- but the wrinkly array of reflections produced a seriously distracting effect. I suppose that could be tempered by moving it further from the plane of focus.

Anyway, the advice to experiment is good. And probably a good start is not buying much of anything until learning what you can do with what you have. In what's left of my mind 'tabletop photography' potentially includes a rather diverse array of possibilities, so maybe there's something useful here.

This is an iPhone shot of the setup in use for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day last year, I went indoors due to ugly weather plus Covid.
View attachment 265531
The wooden 'thing' in foreground is my 8x10 pinhole camera (and I made the rectangular pot for the ficus).

Click to expand...

They are very fancy soft boxes, I have white buckets over lamps for my soft boxes. LCD lamps as incandescent get too hot and start to melt the plastic. For incandescent I use reflective umbrellas. Can never have enough lighting.
Does anyone use those donut style flash units that fit around the lens? Are they effective in minimising shadows?

jeffreyg said:

Here's one with the wok as the background. Illumination was the skylight. I've made many images in the wok printed platinum/palladium, silver-gelatin and digital. If it's an interesting shape and fits in the wok it gets photographed.

Click to expand...

Great work. I'm struggling with the lack of background ideas and the wok is good idea. Why didn't I think of that? Now.. where I get and old worn out wok pan ..

This is not absolutely on topic but I found this inspiring; maybe the message here is that experiment and think of ideas. But it is hard.. But have a look how these guys invented different effects:

vedostuu said:

Great work. I'm struggling with the lack of background ideas and the wok is good idea. Why didn't I think of that? Now.. where I get and old worn out wok pan ..

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I like the wok pan idea as well! I think I may go have a lot around the "recycle" shops and see what kind of interesting things I can find for cheap.

awty said:

Does anyone use those donut style flash units that fit around the lens? Are they effective in minimising shadows?

Click to expand...

They do, but they create unusual catch lights, and they don't put out a huge amount of light. Some of the fashion photographers have used them in interesting ways, but you may need a fashion model to make that work!

vedostuu

We had used the wok for cooking and when my wife stopped using it she stuck it in the pantry. When she decided to reorganize she was going to discard it. I rescued it and have been using it since as a background.. Check thrift shops or perhaps a restaurant for one or some similar pot or pan.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

http://www.sculptureandphotography.com/

MattKing said:

They do, but they create unusual catch lights, and they don't put out a huge amount of light. Some of the fashion photographers have used them in interesting ways, but you may need a fashion model to make that work!

Click to expand...

They make some larger LED rings these days -- some people are touting them for Zoom meeting use. The small ones have been used for macro photos of little stuff like jewelry and the like, but one of my concerns with rings is that they can be so straight-on and even that the resulting image could be somewhat flat. Although I suppose one could add a secondary light or reflector to the mix.