Budget Lighting Kits for Portraits (Part 3): Professional Portrait Lighting for $2000 and Up

In this article, I will discuss some larger budget lighting kit options for the photographer looking to master the art of portrait photography.

If you are working with a smaller budget or would just like to see the full range of options, check out Part 1 and Part 2 of my portrait lighting article series.

Let’s take a moment to talk about portrait photography.

Whether you are making a family portrait to be hung on your client’s wall, a portrait of a real estate agent for a website, a young musician for their Spotify page, or a CEO for the cover of a magazine, one thing that holds true is that you are looking to create a flattering image your subject will love.

You choices of lighting gear should reflect this need and also allow for quick setup and not get in the way. Typical portrait subjects are already feeling a bit uncomfortable in front of the camera, and if you focus too much of your attention on your gear, you will lose that basic connection required to make them comfortable.

With that in mind, I will suggest lighting instruments and modifiers here that are designed to create soft beautiful light, offer versatility, and are easy to set up and get shooting.

These articles will be written at a semi-advanced level so I will not be explaining in detail what aperture/shutter/ISO are. If you need to brush up on that I recommend these articles and videos:

• Learn more about exposure basics in this article by Dawn M. Wayand.
• Learn more about the “Exposure Triangle in Practice” in this video for AdoramaTV by Mark Wallace.

We will take a look at three kits in this article ranging in price from about $2500 to 5500. Two of them will be built a la carte and thus can be built up over time if need be or adjusted based on your style of work.

Portrait Lighting Kits for $2000 and Up

All-in-One Lighting Kit

We will start with the Hensel Integra 500 Plus Freemask 3 Light Kit (). This versatile kit comes complete with three lights, umbrellas, stands, a radio remote, and a softbox—all in a nice rolling case to get you in and out of locations easily. I’ve stated before that when asked, “How many lights do I need?” I typically respond with this: “With three lights, you can do most things.”

Hensel being a professional line of German flash equipment, you know you’ll be able to grow your kit over time by adding various accessories and light shapers, and that can rely on these units to last a long time. Having built-in radio receivers, the Integra 500 units can simply be plugged in and placed where you need them up to 30 meters away. You also won’t have to worry about batteries running low on the receivers or using “line of sight” to fire your units.

Having three units will open up all the options for classic three-point lighting, allowing you to create a huge range of portrait looks. Shooting larger groups will not be a problem with 1500 watt seconds of total power and a set of umbrellas as your key source.

To demonstrate some of these options, I brought Marisa to the Adorama Learning Center and constructed a few portraits.

In this first example [Image 1], I set up two of the units directly in front of Marisa and bounced them into umbrellas. This essentially makes a single very large key as the umbrellas are nearly touching and I’m standing between them. This could also be considered an Umbrella key-Umbrella fill with a 1:1 ratio (equal).

In this small space, although the light reached the background, it was recording a bit darker than its actual shade of grey, so for the next two shots I lit the background first with a softbox [Image 2] and then with a grid [Image 3]. These two setups can be defined as Umbrella(s) key Softbox background and Umbrella(s) key Grid background, respectively.

For the final shot [Image 4] with this kit, I decided to move the umbrella lights to the background and use the softbox as my key. I overexposed the background to make it bright and give the image an overall “High Key” feel.

Build-it-Yourself Portrait Lighting

With this next kit, I’m going to start with a pre-packaged two light kit from Elinchrom and build it up to give some great portrait options. The Elinchrom BRX 500/500 Softbox To Go Kit () could be thought of as the big sister to the D-Lite kit we talked about in the last article. With the same stands, transport bags and softboxes (one square 26” and one octagonal 22”), and skyport transmitter.

The BRX line is a step up in durability and is designed to be a true studio workhorse. Using two lights, a photographer can create a large range of portrait images and by adding a simple reflector kit like the Westcott 42” 6 in 1 (), you add even more versatility. That being said, we want to build a kit here that can handle most situations without compromise, so I’ll add to the system another Elinchrom BRX 500 ().

The third head opens up a bevy of new combinations. In addition to the head, I suggest a very special softbox from Elinchrom, the 75” Indirect Litemotiv Octa Softbox (). This is a classic soft light instrument and one of the most generally flattering light shapers I know of. As this box is fairly large, I’d add a C-Stand from Kupo () to support the head and box. This package is designed to create soft, creamy light and comes together at a price of somewhere around $3,500 (as of writing).

If you are looking to create images that have the look and feel of magazine covers, this would be a great place to start. For larger groups, your probably want to add some umbrellas (such as the Elinchrom 41″ Shallow White/Translucent Umbrella) and reflectors (like this one from Elinchrom).

For this kit, I decided to focus on the 75” Octa and in [Image 5] I set it up as single light to showcase the look of this source. This is simply an Octa-key setup. In [Image 6] I used the remaining two heads in umbrellas to give us a brighter background while maintaining the Octa as key.

For some of the options with the two smaller boxes included in the kit, the check out my previous article here.

It would be easy to create kit after kit to showcase all the cool gear you might want when making portraits, but I will wrap this up with a kit that is most similar to what I currently work with. Again we will start with a two-light kit, this time from Profoto: the Profoto D1 500/500 Air Studio Kit (). The D1s are compact and open up the world of Profoto Light Shapers. Like the previous kit, I will add another single head (such as the Profoto D1 500 Watt Second Air Monolight Flash) to the kit, giving me three in total and allowing for all the three-point light options. The two-head kit comes with two umbrellas, stands, and a case. The umbrellas are great for group shots and evenly lighting the background, however I will “replace” the stands here for three of the Kupo C-Stand Kit () plus an Avenger 650 Pin ().

You may ask, “Why get the kit at all?” And I would tell you that two D1 single lights cost more than the two-light kit (at the time of this writing)—so why not get free stuff? The Profoto D1s have the Profoto Air receiver system built into them, however the kit does not come with a transmitter so I will add to this kit one Profoto Air Remote ().

As I stated earlier, virtually the entire range of Profoto Light Shapers can work with the D1, but i will suggest three that will give you a huge range of looks and can be mixed and matched as needed to create various lighting scenarios. First, I will say the Profoto White Softlight Reflector (Beauty Dish) () will add a bit of punch to your images. It is also small enough to create hard, direct shadows, but big enough to still be flattering on the skin. The beauty dish is a favorite amongst fashion, portrait, and beauty photographers. With the Kupo 40” C-Stand kit, you will be able to position the beauty dish wherever you need to create a variety of lighting patterns.

A good softbox is often the go-to shaper for portraits, both traditional and dramatic. The Profoto RFI 2×3 () plus Profoto Speedring () is a good size for location and studio work and will flatter a wide range of subjects. The final shaper I will suggest is an umbrella much different in style than the umbrellas that come in the standard kit. The Profoto Deep Silver Umbrella Large () is a 51-inch deep umbrella that will add beautifully punchy light to your scene. This shaper works well for small groups, of course, but really stands out as a single light when creating images with a high fashion feel.

To demonstrate some of the images you can create with this Profoto kit I decided to create a few images of Marisa using the shapers in various positions.

For [Image 7], I Lit Marisa with the beauty dish boomed out on the Kupo arm to create a center key and used the Softbox to give her a nice separation light and finally one of the umbrellas included in the kit was used to bring the background exposure up a bit.

In [Image 8] I swapped the softbox and beauty dish to create Softbox key Beauty dish separation and Umbrella background

Finally I attached the 51” Deep Silver Umbrella to the key light and shot a single light portrait [Image 9] and added the beauty dish as a separation light in [Image 10].

Lighting is a powerful tool that can propel us forward as we continue to improve our craft as photographers. No matter your budget level, you should know that there will always be gear that can help you achieve the images to envision and shape your world to your imagination. If you are working on a business plan or just playing with the idea of “going pro” or even semi-pro, think about what your long term goals are, work out a budget, and use the advice in these articles to make wise buying decisions.

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