One of the most common questions when starting out a home studio is “where am I going to shoot?” I can be a daunting questions. For many, this will be the first dedicated shooting space you have had to develop, and for others, like in my case, you are moving from a large studio space and now have to figure out how to create the same images in your home. Regardless of which direction you are coming from, the challenges are similar. Over the next few posts, we are going to be discussing the challenges and possible solutions of creating a dedicated shooting space (camera room) in your home.
So what are some of the things that need to be considered. Let’s make a list
- What are you intending on photographing
- How much space do you need
- What colour should the walls and ceiling be
- Where will the gear be stored
- Will the space be dedicated or will you need to transform it into a camera room each time you want to photograph
- What kind of lighting will you be working with
- What are you going to use as backgrounds
As with most things, before you can really get started, you need to give some serious thought as to what your primary photographic subjects will be. Studio requirements will vary greatly depending upon what you will be photographing. For example, if you are intending on photographing cars, then your space and lighting requirements will be significantly different than if you are planning on photographing still lifes of flowers. For me, my primary subjects are people, typically for a headshot to a 3/4 length portrait. This discussion will be based around that so you will need to take the information offered here and adjust it to your own specific needs.
So for a home based headshot studio, how much space do you really need? You need enough room to allow for some distance between your background and your subject. You need to allow for the distance between your camera and your subject which will depend somewhat on your lens selection and how much of your subject you want to get in the portrait and some space for you to stand behind your camera. This will take care of the length of your studio. For the width, you will need to have enough room for the background and some lights.
The height of the studio will be restricted to whatever the ceiling height you have in your home. If you happen to have high ceilings, that’s fantastic, however, if you are restricted to 8 foot ceilings, that is not a huge problem and I will show you some workarounds. The ceilings in my home studio are only 7 1/2 feet and I am able to work with them.
Let's Get Specific
So how long do we need the camera room to be? I like to have about 6 feet between my subject and my background. I also like to shoot with a lens that is around 100mm which means I am going to need about 10 feet from my camera to my subject plus another couple of feet for me to stand behind the camera. So, in total length, the camera room for photographing headshots should be about 18feet long. You could get away with less background to subject distance, and by using a shorter focal length lens, you can move a little closer to the subject thereby lessening the length of the room. As a rule of thumb though, I would start with 18 feet in mind and then adjust to as necessary to fit into the space you have.
The next question is how wide does the space need to be? This will depend on the backgrounds you decide to use. Seamless paper backgrounds come in 5 foot, 7 foot, and 9 foot widths. To minimize post production, I use the 7 foot paper. If I add 2 feet on either side to accommodate lights, then the room will need to be about 11 feet wide.
So there you have it. The starting place for a home studio that you want to photograph headshots to 3/4 length portraits would be 11 feet by 18 feet. About the size of a living room or dining room.