Small Home Photography Studio Setup – Easy Portrait Photography Tips (2021)

Small Home Photography Studio Setup

So have you ever dreamed of setting up your own home photography studio? Today, I’m gonna show you a small home photography studio setup. I’ll show you, you don’t need a lot of equipment, you don’t need expensive equipment. I have 70 square feet to work with and I’ll show you how I’m gonna do it.

So when you’re planning your home studio, one of the main things you’re gonna wanna think about is planning where you’re gonna set up and where are you gonna set up your background? Pretty much all of us that have a home studio, we have some kind of a background whether it’s canvas, paper.

Background Support System

I wanna show you what I use. I’m using a Varipole from Impact. It’s a VP-712B. That’s the model on it. And the reason I use it, it’s two poles, one on each side of my background to support it. But the best feature is this doesn’t have to be permanent. You can take it down any time and it has a smaller footprint than your traditional background stands. And it’s great if you have a small area for a small home photography studio setup

For these, you can go up very close to the wall and here’s where the Varipole just sits on the floor. As I mentioned, you don’t have the three legs coming out of the traditional stands. It could possibly take up room if you have a small area. This is where it goes up against the ceiling and it doesn’t make marks. It is basically held up there by this clamp mechanism that I’m gonna show you right now.

So what happens is you release it right here and this top pole comes straight down. And it goes up. And tension is kept as you push up right here and this lever goes down and snaps. And it is secure, link in the description for this. So to hold the paper, I have a super clamp that has a U-Hook on it. You can actually get a U-Hook like that attached to a super clamp with 3 of those U-Hooks. So if you wanna have three different colors of paper hung up there, you can do that too in a small home photography studio setup

Now, as far as my background cross arm that I’m using, I’m using this telescopic cross arm from Fotoconic. I’m gonna put that link in the description but you basically turn it. And then when you get it to the length you want it, you just twist it. And it has a hole here with a screw to tighten down on a standard light stand. So this has three sections and it’ll go all the way out to 10 feet. I’ve got this set up right around seven feet. That’s about as much room as I have to go across my area here. And luckily, the background paper that I’m using is about seven feet. But I have the U-Hook, it’ll just set in there. I wanna put it up there and put some paper on it so you can see how it looks in a small home photography studio setup

So here’s how my backdrop looks when it’s all the way down. And I have options here on the floor. The floor is pretty close to the gray of the background. So I have an option to either roll out the paper more for a full length portrait, or I can use Photoshop and blend in the bottom of that paper roll to the floor. Of course, if you’re just gonna do head-shots or three quarter, you don’t need to roll that paper down any further. It will work in this space just fine.

5 in 1 Reflector with Stand

Here’s a very handy tool that I use quite a bit. And it’s really gonna help you out in your home studio. So it’s a collapsible 5-in-1 Reflector. If you take the covers off completely, you have the translucent part of it. Basically what you can use this for is diffusion. You can set up your key light on the other side of this and shoot through it. And you can have a very soft light coming through here. So that’s the translucent site.

And you just put the cover over the translucent side. And now I have a reflector. You can bounce light this way so you have the reflector as a fill light on one side of you. You could turn it over, you can have that golden look of a fill light on you. You can also use this for negative fill too. You can flip it over on the silver side. Somebody could hold it and bend it. And you have those specular highlights that you can get like this. You have to get something with it though.

You definitely need a stand like this to hold up your reflector. This just attaches on here with a stand. You can have your key light coming from this angle. You can bounce the light off the side of your reflector and fill in. If you want that golden look, you can just turn it around like that. Your key light can come on in this angle, bounce off.

You can position it behind you and get a close shot and actually make it look like you have this black background. Just bring your camera in close and you can use it this way too. Yeah, just clipping it on here. And so now I can use this as a white background and just come in close with my camera. This is a very versatile tool. Link in the description.

So this stand is very versatile too. So this nice boom arm right here, you can turn it sideways. And once you turn that boom arm sideways, you just clip it into place and you can adjust it. And it works very well if you have your key light coming down and it will reflect up underneath somebody and it’ll fill in, give them their highlights. You’d be surprised what you can do with just one light and this reflector in this position.

Light Modifiers

So let’s look at modifiers. This is a foldable 47 inch octabox. You see it’s silver in the middle and it’s got a diffuser, inner diffuser, and just snaps down and there’s a screw back here that I’m tightening. And along with that, there’s a translucent diffuser that goes in front. And I’m just gonna put this on quickly. We have our diffuser on in your small home photography studio setup

Now, there’s something really important that you should get, probably come with a light like this, and this is a grid. So I’m gonna put this grid on, so we have this grid here now. And what this is good for is it directs light. Within our shooting area, we want our light to go right on our subject. We don’t want too much to spill on the background. So that’s the reason we have this grid. So a light modifier like this with the honeycomb grid, I found a company on Amazon called GODOX and they have something similar. Link will be in the description, you can check that out.

Another modifier that I use and I highly suggest, it’s an umbrella, 64 inch umbrella and it has silver inside. So it’s reflecting out silver. You could can use it this way, very high contrast. And it also comes with a diffusion so that you could soften that light up. This has a lot of uses. It could be used as a key light. You can use it to fill light, put it way back in your setup or you can bring it up close, put it up here at an angle. It could be a main light, position it on the side and kind of sweep across your subject. So those are kind of interesting ways that you can use this kind of modifier for a small home photography studio setup

Light Stands

This is a very essential piece of equipment. This isn’t just no regular stand, this is a boom or it’s a conventional stand and it’s a boom arm too. It’s from Manfrotto. And as you could see, it’s a pretty wide stand, which is good because once you use one of these for one of its purposes, it needs to be stable. You wanna get a good quality stand, something that’s strong because you don’t want your light and your modifier to fall over in a small home photography studio setup

So this is the boom arm and in a space like this what’s good about this is that you could have it off to the side. And as you have your boom arm out, your modifier is say right here, and you can shoot under it. And basically, it helps you get out of the way yourself in a small home photography studio setup

And since we’re talking about safety, something that you also need to have, especially if you have a boom arm like this, are sandbags. Get you two, three sandbags. This model here allows you to connect one sandbag here and I’m gonna put one down here at the bottom to anchor it. So I got my sandbag at the bottom, one up here, and now I’m gonna put my light on with my modifier and show you what that looks like.

Strobe Lights

And so the lights I use are AlienBees from Paul C. Buff. I’m gonna put a link down in the description for this and the ones from GoDocs, which are pretty good too. It’s not fancy. I’ve had these almost 10 years. They are good enough. They do a very good job and maybe someday I’ll upgrade, but not now. These have been lasting me. So that’s what I’m saying. Find something that’ll last you five to seven years. Don’t go chasing the latest thing as far lighting. Lighting and stands like this, they’re gonna last a long time and they’re going to be just perfect for you and a small home photography studio setup

Stools and Boxes

So some more essential things that you’re gonna need, a stool, any kind of stool will work. Ultimately, I think a stool that you’re gonna adjust up and down will probably serve you better. I like this little step stool right here. You can get it Ikea or Amazon.

This is an apple box. It’s one of the smaller sizes. You can set that down like that and strike the pose. So these are really handy for portraits. So these are apple boxes. They’re really handy. Many uses. You can use it for posing. You could sit on it while you’re doing your shoot. You can paint them because they come unfinished. You can stack it like that, make a posing table for a small home photography studio setup

Camera and Lens

For a camera, I’m using the Canon 5D Mark III. It’s an oldie, but a goodie. Full frame camera. For lens I’m using the Canon 24-105. It’s good because it is a zoom lens, allows you to back up, zoom in, I think for a space this small, I may be able to get by with a 50 millimeter prime lens, but this will be a good all around lens in this space especially for a small home photography studio setup

Tripod

And yes, another invaluable tool is the tripod, the tripod because it’s gonna keep your camera steady, keep your hands free. This is a pretty stable one. It’s a Manfrotto. Again, links in the description and some alternatives. Make sure your tripod has a good ball head on it. Ball heads give you freedom by all of these adjustments down here to basically allow you to angle your camera. Cool feature with this is I can switch it so that I am in the portrait mode and shoot like this also. So a versatile ball head with this capability is really invaluable for a small home photography studio setup

Light Meter

And we can’t forget this tool here, the light meter. Sekonic makes a lot of these different models. So this will tell you what f-stop you should set your camera to depending on what your lighting is. You can tell what the lighting is on your background. You can tell what the f-stop is right on your subject space. It’s good to be able to take a reading here and then adjust your camera. Essential to a small home photography studio setup.

There is the 47 inch octabox with the grid, with the honeycomb grid on it. Back there is my 64 inch umbrella that I’m gonna use for fill light. So that’s how things I have set up so far, a little bit of space over here, and here’s the rest of the floor space. And I can roll out the paper in this area right here if I need to. I’ll have my camera set up back here and doing my shooting like this. There is your small home photography studio setup.

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