When I bought the camera mid-fall, the weather was pretty awful, so some days I had to whip up a DIY studio for photo experiments. And honestly, it's simple. A few sheets of colored cardboard, a couple of old lamps, 3 or 4 household flashlights… the tripod and the camera. That's all you need to shoot a bit and learn about lighting. And if you've got a flash? You're golden.
You don't need a model at the start for studio shots. Just grab a model kit, toy, figurine, or any cool object you've got lying around, and play with your “collection of cheap flashlights, one of every color,” to see what the lighting does. In this one I used an old lamp with a 4000K LED bulb, a workshop flashlight with cooler light (5000K), and a little bargain-bin handheld flashlight, also cool light. I focused on the front headlight, stopped down a bit, and got enough depth of field so the rear stayed softer. The lighting looked pretty decent, and to clean it up I went black and white to even out the color temp. The black cardboard did its job as a clean background.
Another “studio” example — this time a tiny modeling clamp, shot up close to take advantage of the lens magnification. It's almost a macro with flash. That golden tone comes from a warm color temp thanks to the diffuser and filter I stuck on the flash. You get a narrow DOF (depth of field), but the sharpness is really solid. The lights and shadows give the object a ton of texture and depth.
This one's a bit crazier — I used the RF100-400 at 400mm at its minimum focus distance, around 1.2 meters, which has a 0.41x macro function. I wanted to test how sharp this versatile lens really is. Side lighting from the flash on a black background did a great job.
So go for it — with just a few odds and ends you can run some really fun, useful experiments at home.
Photobones: This is where the Notepad comes in handy for jotting down the settings and lighting or composition details you used