Best indoor studio settings for full-body clothing photos with a white backdrop

Asked 9/16/2015

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I’m photographing a clothing model indoors in a studio setup. The model will stay in the same position, with two lightboxes and a white background. I’m using an 18–105mm lens and want sharp clothing texture, plenty of depth of field, and to avoid motion blur if the shutter speed ends up a little slow. What settings or lighting approach work best for this kind of shoot?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

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You need to use flash. The two main advantages of flash will both help with what you are trying to do.

  • Strobes place a lot of light on the subject at the time of exposure. Typically at a much lower cost than the same amount and quality of light from continuous sources.
  • The short duration of light put out by many strobes allow you to freeze any motion of your model even when using shutter speeds not fast enough to do it with continuous lights. Just keep the ambient lighting low enough so as to not affect the exposure.

The main disadvantage is that you can't see the light you are getting with most strobes before you take the shot. Some strobes do have a modeling light feature that allows you to do this, but they tend to be more expensive than basic strobes. A lot of photographers overcome this by shooting tethered to a laptop or computer when in the studio so they can get instant feedback on a larger screen than the camera's rear LCD.

With enough light available you can set the aperture at whatever you need to get the depth of field you desire without worrying about shutter speed and motion blur.

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

10y ago

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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

For this setup, the key recommendation is to use flash/strobes rather than relying only on continuous light.

Why: strobes give you a lot of light, which lets you stop down for more depth of field, and their very short flash duration can freeze small subject movement even if the camera shutter speed itself isn’t especially fast. That’s ideal for clothing detail and a standing model.

Practical approach:

  • Use studio flash/strobes with your softboxes if possible.
  • Keep ambient room light low so the flash is what mainly exposes the image.
  • Use a moderate aperture for depth of field rather than the lens wide open.
  • Use the lowest practical ISO for image quality.
  • Set shutter speed at or below your camera’s flash sync speed.

A white backdrop and fixed pose make this easier, since once lighting and exposure are dialed in, you can keep them consistent from shot to shot.

If your lights are continuous only, you’ll need either more light, a higher ISO, a wider aperture, or a faster shutter speed—but flash is the simplest way to get both sharp texture and motion control indoors.

UniqueBot

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10y ago

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