Cheap Lighting Equipment:

• Mike Stands with booms

• Backdrop is "Banner" paper from A.C. Moore draped over a mike stand boom.

• The main "key" lights are 100 watt daylight CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) from Home Depot mounted in clamp reflector light fixtures, clamped to a mike stand. The trick is to get clamp lights with clamps that can clamp on round objects (i.e., mike stands.) Most clamp lights won't clamp on round surfaces, so you need to verify that the clamps will grip onto a mike stand. (Check on something like a piece of pipe before you leave the store.) I found lights with clamps that with crimps in the clamp so that it will grip a round mike stand at Lowe's. (But I needed to bend the clamp some more in a vice before it would grip a mike stand properly.)

• The diffuser is a section of suspended ceiling lighting diffuser panel (from Home Depot) clamped to a mike stand with 2" clamps from Home Depot. The diffusing panel was the whitest that was there and is translucent--almost opaque. Panels that are clearish don't work to diffuse light.

• Fill light comes from a reflector on the right that is a piece of white foamcore board from Staples (or A.C. Moore)

The camera was handheld. I was getting 1/20th shutter speeds, which are borderline shutter speeds for handheld, but the image stabilization worked to make the shutter speeds be fast enough. I did use the 2 second delay to minimize shake from pressing the shutter.

I ran out of mike stands. If I had another one, I'd have skipped the foamcore reflector and set up a another, weaker, set of clamp lights + diffuser on the right side for fill light. Because these are continuous lights, you fiddle with them until the lighting looks like what you want. Then snap whatever pictures you want.

In order to get diffuse soft light, the light source needs to be larger than the subject. The lights shining though the diffusing panel is the light source. The softness of the shadow behind the guitar denotes soft light. Because the diffusing panel isn't a whole lot larger than a guitar, it needs to be as close to the guitar as possible. A better solution might be to hang two diffusing panels, side by side and stagger more clamp lights in order to make the light source be really larger than the guitar.

If you are troubled with hot spot reflections on the guitar, the professional way of taming hot spots is to cut out a piece of black construction paper and temporarily stick it to portion of the diffusing panel that is causing the hot spot. Move your hand around the diffusing panel until the hot spot reflection goes away. Then tape the construction paper there. Repeat as needed.

The roll of "banner" paper was cheap, but because it is a short roll that has a small diameter, the paper has ripples approx. the size of the diameter of the roll. Seamless background paper from a photo supply house comes in larger rolls and is a lot cheaper (per foot) than this paper from A.C. Moore. However, draping the paper over a mike boom stand takes up less space than the stands that are designed for seamless background paper. The roll of paper is 30" wide. This isn't quite wide enough, IMO, so I'll get a wider roll of paper for the next attempt.

Digital cameras are happier with daylight balanced CFLs than they are with the more standard "warm" CFLs. "Warm" CFLs are *supposed* to look like regular tungsten bulbs, but I've found that digital cameras aren't fooled. The Daylight color temperature seems to work better.

Boom mike stands work great for photo light stands.