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PDN >$3000 Studio If you are among the newly freelanced and looking to build a studio on the cheap, PDN has an article on building a studio on less than $3000 in gear. After reading it, I felt that the article missed the mark a little bit in their purchases. The thing I found surprising is that they spend most of the 3000 on camera bodies and lenses and very little on the studio lighting gear. This may work if you are looking at doing more of a portrait studio setup where your primary clients are general consumers who just want various shots of themselves or their loved ones but doesn't translate very well to commercial or advertising type client. On my first assisting gig ever Thomas Boyd told me, "There is nothing that put your client lose faith in your abilities than seeing you fight with your lighting gear" (probably not his exact wording but close enough). This knowledge also extends to cover cheap lighting gear breaking, which my own painful experiences have taught me. Another disadvantage using off brand or no name brand lighting gear you lose the ability to tap your local gear rental place for just the accessories. I use Clutch Camera in Portland Ore., but there are countless others including Borrow Lenses which will straight up ship the gear to you. This allows you to get the light modifiers that you need for the job on the cheap and billable directly to the client. Twelve dollars for a softbox is alot easier for a client to stomach than $70 for renting a pack with a single head. The same goes for backdrops. Why buy a nice cloth one when you can get a seamless paper roll and bill it's use straight to the client and they can even take it with them if they purchase the whole thing. Lastly, good lighting gear is like good lenses, they hold value over time and will last and last and last some more. Just yesterday I did some work in a studio with 3 cabinets full of Speedotron equipment and each power pack had a date on the top that corresponded to the date that said pack was purchased. We used 4 packs for the shoot, 2 were from the mid nineties, one was from 1984 (the year I was born) and the last one was older than that. All fired flawlessly. I were to price it out I would break it down something like this (using mostly their numbers) Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 - $350, That leaves $355 to pick up a softbox and grip gear, like A clamps, cinefoil, wood and other materials for making the necessary light diffusion devices and/or product tables depending on the jobs you are going to go after. As always, all opinions are my own and all are to be taken with a grain of salt. There may be a reason PDN didn't ask me to write the article :) It is best to figure out the type of work you are going after (location, product, etc.) and tailor your starting kit to being most effective in that line of work rather than getting your shopping list off a website online. Visit your local ASMP and talk to photographers already in the line of work that you are going after to help you. You will get a better load out at a good price and have gear you can feel good you have invested in. Via Tara Kocourek 
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