How to Set up a Home Photo Studio

In this article I take you through how to set up a home photo studio. For the majority of photographers who want to begin a career in studio photography, their first studio is quite often a small home photography studio occupying a room in their house, a garage or, if the budget permits, a small rented space.

Without a doubt, setting up your own photography studio is exciting. However, there are a lot of questions and considerations. How big should my space be? Do I have to colour the walls or should I use backdrops? What  essential equipment do I need?

Hopefully you will find the answers to a lot of your questions in this article. 

small home photography studio
If you’re considering setting up a small home photography studio, you probably have a lot of questions. Before you dive in, do your research and plan exactly what it is you need based on what you think you might be photographing. Remember you can always scale up as you expand your repertoire.

What will you be shooting in your home photo studio; will it be adults, children, animals or products? Knowing the answer to this will guide you in your decisions when it comes to space requirements and equipment. Product photography often needs less space than portrait photography, but often needs more equipment, (I will expand on this later in the article.)

At this point, the next best course of action is to look at examples of other studios, if you know a local photographer, pop in and take a look, they are usually quite friendly, especially if you aren’t going to be competing in their niche. You could always offer your assistance for free in return for observing how they work. All of this will give you a good idea of what you need to get started and how to make a small home photography studio space work.

How Much Space Will I Need for my Small Home Photography Studio?

Not all professional photographers have large studio spaces; spare rooms, and even garages can easily be turned into home photography studios. I am currently converting my larger bedroom into a small home photography studio. It’s probably not the best time to do this what with Covid and regular lock down’s. However I can hone my skills at product photography while I am imprisoned in my home!

In this article I look at studio lighting, and in this one I look at the set-up for product photography.

How to Set up a Home Photo Studio

How to set up a home photo studio?

The space you require is dependent upon what you are shooting. A food photographer could probably work in a relatively small space, or even in their kitchen; but a product photographer or portrait photographer may need a bit more elbow room, say 3.5m x 4.5m might be a good sized space.

To be honest, you don’t necessarily need a very big space. You can make a small studio space work for you as long as you can control the lighting.

Almost as important as the overall floor-space is the height of the ceiling. Low ceilings can make it harder to control light, and dictate the type of lighting you can use, which might not be ideal. While you can overcome the challenges of shooting in a small space with some creative genius, there’s not much you can do if you don’t have enough height to put your lights up! How to set up a photography studio at home just requires a little thought and planning.

Recommended equipment

To be perfectly honest you do not need all the bells and whistles when you are starting out. I started with a budget light box to do my product and food photography. You don’t need a fully equipped studio to start studio shooting.

How to Set up a Home Photography Studio

The results were more than acceptable, especially if you have a basic understanding of Lightroom and Photoshop. This bag was shot in the portable light box and with a little bit of love and attention it is a great product photo for using on Amazon or Etsy.

product photography tote bag flowered pattern

What equipment do you need to set up a home photo studio?

Lenses:

A selection of different lenses is useful. You already have at least one, maybe two or three, but if you’re thinking of setting up a small home photography studio you need evaluate your lenses and consider how they will work in your available studio space.

I have several lenses, including: –

  • 10-20mm f2.8
  • 100mm prime f2.8
  • 18-70mm f5.6
  • 100-400mm f5.6

Apart from the 100-400mm, the others work fine and give me the ability to shoot a variety of styles. If I was going to add a lens it would be the 70-200mm f2.8 as this is a great portrait lens; and if I was being greedy, a 50mm prime would find a home in my studio as well.

Studio lights:

I love working in natural light, and do so as much as possible. However, studio lights give you far greater control than natural light and even speedlites, plus they allow you to shoot at any time of day. Once again you do not need a a whole range of lights when you are learning how to set up a photography studio. For starters, a single studio light is perfectly adequate if you’re just starting out, as you can easily add to this as your needs increase. You can get really creative with one light, and as I have shown, a lightbox is great for relatively small products and even food photography.

Lighting modifiers:

First of all, what is a lighting modifier? In a nutshell, a modifier is a piece of equipment which controls how the light is distributed across and onto your subject.

There are several types:

  • soft-boxes How to Set up a Home Photography Studio
  • octabox How to Set up a Home Photography Studio
  • umbrellas How to Set up a Home Photography Studio
  • poly board How to Set up a Home Photography Studio
  • foam board 

How to Set up a Home Photography Studio

Softboxes, for example, are way better at containing light than an umbrella, and reflective umbrellas are better at containing light than transparent umbrellas. If you are on a tight budget, think about getting a mix of large soft lighting and hard lighting, maybe a large octabox or softbox together with poly or foamboards.

Lighting stands:How to Set up a Home Photography Studio

Do not forget lighting stands to hold your lights. When choosing remember to consider the floor space they take up and well as their height and support capability.

Tripod:

A solid tripod is an essential piece of kit, particularly if you are using your studio for product photography. Decide whether you are going to use a ball head or gimbal. My choice is a gimbal because I can control the camera far more easily.

Backgrounds:

When choosing your backgrounds, keep it simple. Remember a solid wall provides a great background that you can repaint whenever you need, and provides a surface that is consistent. If painting the wall is not an option, other relatively cheap backgrounds for small spaces include paper rolls, pop up backgrounds, or sheets of MDF.

A Tethered Computer or Laptop:

Have you ever found that the image on the camera viewfinder gives an accurate representation of the image you have just shot? Nope, me neither. Seeing the image on a larger screen is always better, and that essentially what tethering allows. By hard wiring your camera into a laptop or computer you can see each image on that screen as soon as you have captured each image.

There are lots of advantages to shooting tethered, including more efficient workflow and greater accuracy. Having a laptop or monitor that you can tether your camera into while shooting makes a huge difference. You do not need any specialist software, both Nikon and Canon offer a tethered shooting feature. You can also tether directly into Lightroom.

Other accessories:

As you progress you will add many other useful accessories that will come in handy for your studio. For example product photographers often require scrims, (something which reduces the intensity and/or harshness of your lighting.) If you are shooting a lot of portraits then might need general makeup bits like hair spray or body cream. 

While this may seem like quite a lot of equipment and potential up-front cost, bear in mind you don’t have to buy everything at once. You can start with just the basics and build up from there. To be honest the second hand market is great if you aren’t too precious about having used kit.

I cover studio lighting in my next article.