Since you'll need HMI type lighting. Make sure the hotel has 25 AMP+ Dedicated circuits to plug into. A 1000watt light is going to draw a peak of 15amps alone. Do your math and work it out with their convention setup/services department,.

Good point. I'll finding out what I have available in the room at the staff meeting next week.

Congrats... if you ever get out to Aussie I'll have to hire you to take a decent picture of me. :P

And then Photoshop the hell out of it. Yeah. Can you make me thin?

Lol. I'd have my gear with me anyway and you know you wouldn't have to hire me. :P

I've not used them myself, but have heard great things about the Elinchrom monolights. Unless you're looking to do very large group shots, a 600WS kit should be able to light anything you need and would fit just fine on a standard electrical outlet.

I'd encourage you to consider a softbox instead of umbrella for your main light; the light from them is much softer and more controllable, in my experience. The softer the light, the more flattering the photo. And tho umbrellas are great for covering a large area, its hard to keep the light contained - say, off of a backdrop.

And one tip on that point... it was very counter-intuitive to me at first, but to get the softest light you can, get your lights as close to your subjects as possible, without getting them in the frame. A 3' softbox 3' away is going to give beautifully soft, wrap-around light - move that same light back another 3', and it is effectively a smaller light source, and you start getting harsher shadows again.

You might also want to see if they rent PocketWizards, so you can fire the strobes wirelessly. Having one less cable for your subjects to trip over might be a lifesaver, especially with fursuiters with limited vision shuffling around.

You're an old hand with fursuiters, so you might have already thought of this... but might also be great to have a couple powerful fans on hand, both to keep your subjects (and yourself) cool, as well as to get that sexeh windblown look.

Best of luck with your shoot!

They have Bowens monolights available that seems to be it. I'm not expecting more than three, maybe four at once for the shoots. It will most likely be 1 or 2 at a time on average.

I'm thinking that I'll be placing the light stands at the corners of the backdrop. That should be close enough to give a pretty soft light and, at the same time, far enough away that suits aren't going to be in danger of knocking into them. I'm expecting to have to compromise ideal lighting a bit in order to accommodate a fursuiter's lack of vision. The background I'm looking at right now is 10'x24'. You think the soft boxes will accommodate my proposed setup?

Pocket Wizard is a go. I had no idea you could trigger studio lights wirelessly. That will definitely be a bonus for less for suits to trip over.

The shoot is actually going to be taking place a couple doors down from the headless lounge. So the suits will have easy access to fans and liquid during the shoot. It's going to be in the hangar so I'll also have a large audience too.

Thanks for your input! It'll be a great help.

Here's what I know in regards to setting up equipment for lighting:

First off, equation to watch for watts: Watts = volts * amps. Volts is about 110, 120 max. If you know the peak watts your lighting's going to take up, divide by V and make sure that the hotel's fuses have more than what you'll be using, just to avoid the trying of trying to explain to the hotel why their circuits need to be reset.

Set the camera's white balance away from 'Auto White Balance', for starters. Try experimenting with 'Daylight', 'Flash', and 'Custom', It'd also be useful to get a light meter, if you're using strobe lighting, in order to get proper exposure, since the flash is too quick for the camera to calculate proper exposure. That, and a color chart to start off with, in order to get as close to proper color when you're doing the color correction in post.

As far as setting up the lighting, you're going to want to watch for {key light + fill light} to {fill light} ratio for multiple heads, in order to get proper exposure. 3:1 is the max to watch for, which I believe is 1.5:1 stops.

Last point, if it matters, I'd go more for strobe lighting than anything continuous, like HMI or Tungsten, since strobe is a quick flash, while the other two can get pretty hot since they're always running. I know this from experience in dealing from all sorts of lighting in both photography and film making.

Hope this helps.

I'll be getting circuit info for the room at the staff meeting next weekend. From what I've gathered so far, I'm not expecting to need more than a 600 or 750WS kit (which would only take 6.5A). So I should be good to go no matter what. Crossing my fingers on that.


I don't see any light meters available for rent from the place. I'll have to look into availability. What I might is just set up the studio a bit early (Before the parade.) and play around with white balance and exposure till I get a feel for it. I'm intending to to shoot in full manual mode if I can.

I'm not familiar with that so I'm going to guess that key light = studio lighting and fill light = room lighting. So if I'm interpreting this correctly studio light:fill light::3:1. Is that right?

Monikker also mentioned softboxes. I'm thinking of going with a softbox/strobe setup maybe. After I figure out what current I have to work with in the room, I'll be making a trip over to Glazer's to see what I can get.

Thanks for your input! It'll be a great help.

Key light and fill lights both refer to the lighting that you'll be using, either the strobe lights or continuous lights. Room lighting generally isn't included in this, since it doesn't really contribute due to not having enough output. At least, that's from the experience I have.

That 3:1 refers to (both lights, key and back-up):(back-up), although that's really more a ratio you don't want to exceed rather than a hard rule. You could have both lights equidistant from the subject and have a 1:1 ratio, that way you get a nice even exposure on both sides. Again, take plenty of time before the shoot to try and figure out which lighting setup works the best for proper exposure. And it would be a good idea to have some sort of monitor there to see which results also work the best, since the camera's lcd is limited in what looks good..

Also, if you have the luxury of a color card, it's always good to take a picture of somebody holding it whenever you change lighting setup.