Although studio photography can be a bit intimidating the first time, it is actually far easier than natural light photography.

The reason is simple: the photographer controls the light. Once you establish your settings, you should be able to get completely consistent exposures for as long as your setup remains unchanged.

As evidence of the reality of this, I normally do zero post-processing on my studio shots (other than conversion to black-and-white). No exposure adjustment, no white balance tinkering, nothing.

Those who know me will know that I'm a huge fan of natural light photography. If I had to choose between natural and artificial light, and shoot that for the rest of my life, there would be no competition: natural light without a moment's hesitation.

But studio photography is still great fun. The great thing about it is the control it gives you. You get to choose the direction, strength and characteristics of the light.

So, let's start with the basics.

Lighting

There are three main types of lighting:

Hot-lights are conventional tungsten lights - effectively floodlights. The advantage of these is that you can see exactly what the lighting is like in direction, strength and quality because they stay on the whole time. The main disadvantage is the reason they are known as hot-lights: they put out a lot of heat! This can be very uncomfortable for the model, as well as causing her to squint when looking directly towards them.

Strobes are powerful flash units. Although they look like spotlights, they work in exactly the same way as a flash-gun. Since you can't see how the lighting will look, they have low-powered hot-lights within them, known as modelling lights. These are very dim, but show the direction and relative strengths of the lights. Some modelling lights are linked to the main strobe, so if you halve the power of the strobe it will also halve the output of the modelling light; others have separate controls, so you have to do this manually.

Cold-lights are a relatively modern phenomenon, essentially flourescent panels. In theory, these are ideal - they offer constant full-strength lighting, with no heat, in a form that is already soft (more on that in a moment). As yet, though, they don't offer the same power, and are significantly more expensive than strobes.

Most studios, then, use strobes. The main problem with flash lighting is that it is very harsh, so we need a way of softening it.

Light modifiers

The generic term for devices to soften light is 'light modifiers'. There are three main types of light modifier: umbrellas, softboxes and beauty dishes.

Umbrellas

The classic light modifier we probably all know from cheap portrait studios is the white or silver umbrella. The strobe is fired into the umbrella (and thus away from the subject), and the light is then reflected back from the inside of the umbrella.

Although this sounds good, umbrellas are surprisingly ineffective at softening light. If you look at headshots taken with umbrella setups, it is usual to see the white patches on the skin that are the characteristic of harsh flash lighting. (Note that this harshly-lit look is in vogue at the moment for some types of fashion photography.)

Some umbrellas are designed to be used in a different way. Instead of firing the strobe away from the subject, you fire it towards the subject and the light passes through the umbrella. This tends to be a little more effective, but is still generally not very good. A better form of softening was thus required.

Softboxes

Softboxes are hollow boxes made from fabric (with some kind of frame to hold their shape). They are usually rectangular. The strobe pokes into the back of the softbox. The back and sides are usually black, while the front is white.

The strobe lights the inside of the softbox. The light that passes through it is pretty evenly spread over the whole white fabric surface at the front, giving a soft, even light. The larger the softbox, the greater the softening effect. A typical size for a professional quality softbox is about one metre square, sometimes much larger.

Softboxes are very effective. Here's an example of a shot taken with a softbox:

Beauty dishes

A beauty dish works in the same way as an umbrella. It is a large metal or plastic reflector. The strobe is fired into the reflector, and the reflected light is soft and even.

Unlike umbrellas, beauty dishes work well. They are starting to take over now from softboxes.

Here's an example of a shot taken with a beauty dish:

Studio hire versus Home studio

If you want to do some studio photography, you can either buy your own kit or hire a commercial studio.

The first time you try it is a no-brainer: you don't want to splash out lots of money on buying kit until you know whether or not you're going to get into it.

Most studios will show you how to set things up if you let them know you're a beginner at the time of booking. They can probably also recommend an experienced model. I strongly recommend you hire a professional model the first time at least, so that she can get on with the posing unprompted so that you are free to concentrate on the technicalities. Trying to master studio lighting at the same time as explaining to a model how you would like her to pose is probably not a recipe for a relaxing learning experience!

If you are in or around London, I can recommend a model called Alison who goes by the professional name of Peltigra. If you tell her you're a beginner, she will just run through some poses without any input from you - this is what I did for my first studio session.

If you decide that studio photography is for you, then you may decide that you want to buy your own equipment. I did - until I started doing some sums ...

You can buy cheap-and-nasty studio lighting brand new for a few hundred quid. The best-known example of this is Portaflash. For around £300, you'll get two strobes, an umbrella, a reflector, lighting stands and a few accessories:

Photo: Portaflash

This seems like excellent value, but is in fact almost useless. The strobes are very low-powered, so only really suitable for headshots. We've already discussed the ineffectiveness of an umbrella as light-modifier. Adding a softbox to this kit would make the main strobe so dim as to be almost unusable.

If you want to do full-body shots, and to use a sufficiently large softbox to get properly soft lighting, you'll need one or more professional strobes: 500w or 750w. Not cheap. You'll want a large softbox for each strobe. Not cheap. You'll want a backdrop system, and it's surprising how large these need to be for full-body shots. Not cheap.

In fact, if you cost it all up, as I did, then even buying secondhand, you are looking at an all-in cost of around £1200. At which point, you need to ask yourself how often you will use it.

Realistically, given the amount of time I have available and hassle involved in setting it up, I had to admit this was unlikely to be more than once a month. For maybe a couple of hours. That's 24 hours a year, tops.

Commercial studio hire rates vary, but a typical rate for a studio aimed primarily at amateurs and semi-pros is £25/hour. At that rate, it would take two years to break even with my own kit. By which time, much better kit will be on the market and I'd want to upgrade.

So I decided that, for me, commercial studio hire makes much more sense. It's financially sound, there is no minimal setup and breakdown required - and someone else is responsible for keeping the kit updated as new technology arrives.

However, I did invest in a decent flashgun - which can effectively act as a low-powered studio strobe for headshots:

Studio setup - the real basics!

Let's assume you are hiring a commercial studio with pro-quality gear. Let's assume you have a model who knows how to pose, and a digital SLR for instant feedback.

The first decision you need to make is one strobe or multiple strobes. I'm a great believer in learning the rules before you break them, so I started by learning traditional balanced lighting. This will typically use one main strobe, positioned at about 45 degrees to the model (say front and right); a large reflector (typically full-length) on the opposite side (left), and - traditionally - a second strobe used as a hair light, to get a shine in the hair (above and rear). You use the modelling lights to see roughly how the lighting will look when fired.

This gives an image that looks like this:

If you want a totally white background, all you do is have a white wall or roll of paper (known as Colorama) and light it with two strobes. You set the lighting about 1.5 stops brighter than the subject so that it is so over-exposed it appears in the photo as pure white.

Here's a typical setup:

And here's a photo taken with that:

But for figure shooting, you will often use the world's simplest lighting setup: a single light with either no reflector or a black reflector to kill reflected light from any light-coloured walls. In this particular case, I have boosted the contrast in Photoshop:

So now you are free to play. Leave the camera on manual, leave the aperture and shutter speed as-is, and enjoy!