It would be really cool if we could convert the social area into a temporary studio,.
I was thinking just some hooks to hang up a backdrop and a soft box and a few studio flash lamp on a rail with reflects and a old D2 .
It would be really useful to photograph stuff we make before it goes out the door.
It would help members build up a portfolio and get us loads of great PR photos
Is this a temp session setup or permanent addition?
I was thinking that it could be permanent.
So if we needed to photograph something that we made we could convert the seating area into a studio and take a photo and put it back. To a seating area.
So a permanent. , temporary studio
Sounds like a good and useful idea. Good photos are a currency nowadays!
How about the ‘assembly area’ in messy? There could even be permanent lights fitted to the gantry there.
Does not matter where. But it photography is a dust free activitie so I would go for the clean room.
The lights could be permanently set up above the sofas
Yes, I was just thinking of ease of use and floorspace. Having to move sofas is a PITA, but I guess that’s only for large objects. That said: what size would we generally need to ‘capture’ members’ projects? When we talked about this before I’d imagined something small, say 60 or 90cm cubed.
maybe a board that slides out over the sofas and a drop down screen? Would be fine for objet, less for people.
I was not thinking about a full size studio for people and big bits of furniture, but a permanent thing so smallish stuff can be done quickly and if required the lights can be moved to the messy for big stuff
Copy and paste the argument for keeping the social area as unrestricted as possible from the private thread about using it as a kids play pen.
It’s important to the culture of the space and shouldn’t be seen as dead space, why not use the kitchen.
we have most of the stuff to make this happen on a temporary basis anyway. There’s a load of floodlights, and at least one old projector screen somewhere. A bit of imagination, and anywhere in the space could be turned into a temporary booth at pretty short notice.
500 w halogen lamps are what I always have used but it’s not very good, I was hoping that the space might buy a set of studio flashes .
It would be really cool 
It’s worth naming the fact that Joe has stated before that he doesn’t think the social space is of much value (not sure if he was serious, or provoking debate?), but it’s very much worth defending in my opinion. (Having a printer there, for example, feels a bit odd).
Making the social area child friendly is about inclusion. I do understand that sometimes people have a blind spot when it comes to kids, and it seems to be publicly acceptable to say things like ‘I don’t like children’. However: not being child-friendly excludes a lot of people from the space, so to me it’s an easy and obvious win.
It’s to small to be of any use in my opinion.
Sorry
But I am not trying to get rid of it just do something useful with it , without changing its purpose as a sitting area
If you are looking at lights, Go for CFL or LED lamps rather than flash as that way you can do video !
Courty
I think the space would work well as a multi use space. Although the the area serves well as a social area it is very occasional and often the table is used as a extended social area.
There would be no reason why the area couldn’t have a child friendly set there as I believe that too would only occasional.
I think the proposal is asking to have system that you can pull out a photographic studio set up and pull it away when not in use.
It would also be a great way to encourage more people to document their makes both personal and for the space and have good quality photos to showcase the makerspace and the great work that takes place within.
To get to ISO 100 at f8 it’s going to take a lot of led’s, there’s no reason why we can’t have both , my plan was to enable a cheap second hand to dslr work well .
I remember having to use silly amounts of halogen to get film working well without trypods never . I suspect that my dslr is only 1% as good as yours in low light, in full light as well for that matter
I can ask at work about lighting for small products shots. My preference would be flash with softbox and a small infinity cove. You do need a sizeable LED array to get decent light and even then you’re not near the same level of light - with flash you can use high aperture and get supersharp images with controlled light.
In summary a couple of flash units and dslr you’d get well profesh looking images.
No reason we can’t have a couple of LED panels for video as well.
If we did invest in decent flash units we could use them for a photobooth also.
Wex photography have a used section - http://www.wexphotographic.com/used-lighting-equipment/b3246 a couple of elinchroms should be afforable.
Mini infinity cove - we’d need a collapsible one that can be stored flat, and possibly a bigger one:
We can make one of them that also holds the printer is storage and folders out
Love this!
