Tonight I rearranged my spare room to make it more photography friendly. Being only narrow I couldn't get the light stands far enough apart to get the backdrops in between. The solution; put them on the long wall!

I am pretty happy with the results. All these had only levels adjustments. If anyone wants to know anything of the technique please feel free to ask. Likewise, if you have any idea of improvement of the lighting I would be very interested. (In keeping with the rules of this forum I'm not after critique of the photos, only technique.)

My old K10D which no one wants to buy.



K10D detail shot.



K10D rear shot. I need another backdrop to camera right to stop the reflection of the wall behind.



K10D and my 'disposable' K100D. Does anyone know if lighting the background from behind would fill the shadows between the two?



Circa 1970's Pentax M50. You can see the reflection of the bows in the umbrella. How would I avoid that? Is a softbox the only option?



After taking photos of everything interesting in the spare room I turned my eye to the bedroom. I found this guy.



Notice in this shot the reflections of the umbrellas, but also the bright dot of the built in flash firing the CLS.



I grabbed my nearly empty bottle of Hugo Boss, but clear on white doesn't really work. I had the lights perpendicular to the lens (left & right of the subject) but still get reflections of the lights. I didn't think of it at the time, but would using the umbrellas for bounce rather than shoot-through help this?



I changed to a black background which made for better contrast. Can anyone offer some technique advice on how to prevent light spill onto the black background? This is one area I need to look at.



Finally, a setup shot. The stand to the right is actually a clothes rack my g/f used at her last house. They were about $20 from Target. I have a white background on one side and a black on the other. The 'backgrounds' are just $5/m black and white fabric from Spotlight, fixed to the top of the stand with safety pins. The 'curved' background is just some more of the white fabric held with weights at the top and the subject at the bottom. The beauty of the clothes rack is it's on little casters so I can change from a black background to a white background in about 30 seconds.