Building a studio - Advice needed!

At home we have an external brick shed, 12ft square, that was setup to be an office a few years back. It ended up being a junk room!

This year though, we are planning on making use of it by converting it into a studio! We have started well already on 'Operation clear out the office' with all heavy furniture being fully removed by the weekend. There is a lot of old stuff that has value that will be sold on eBay / local bootsales to help fund the studio.

Plans for the studio are for us to learn how to use studio lights (we are both doing a 4 week course run by our local camera club) and start doing portraits for friends and family with a view to earning an additional income in the future and also to rent the fully kitted studio out during the day to those who need room / lighting kit for their own use.

Our ideas so far include:-

Wall mounted vinyl backgrounds
Decent set of Bowens lights - Bowens S mount gives us more flexibility / options?
Good collection of softboxes / umbrellas etc.

Negatives:

No facilities!
Ceiling is low, only just over 2 metres high.
Bit of damp to sort out

Positives:

Completely self contained
Fully plastered with a wooden floor
In ceiling lights
Secure door / alarm system
Network cable so can provide a 50mb broadband
Masses of sockets
We live on site and my shop is only 2 minutes away during the day.

We would prefer getting decent kit as we would like to look as professional as possible to both future clients and those who rent out the studio, so a good basic setup will be needed first, then added to at a later date as and when money is made from it.

So the questions to those of you who have experience are, what would you do? What would you buy? What would you charge to rent it out for a day? Basically any advice you can give to make money out of it!

Our initial goal was to be up and running by the end of February, however with Focus on Imaging at the beginning of March this can be stretched by a couple of weeks!

This is the office as it was after clearing enough room to see the floor! Picture taken from doorway.




Any help / tips / ideas / advice great fully received!

you'll need to mount some conduit pipes accross the ceilings and buy some superclamps to avoid using lightstands as much as possible.. so have them three inches or so below the ceiling..
use some large tool chests on castors for storage.

small studios fare better when painted black or dark grey to avoid light scatter.

I am no expert in terms of studios, I have turned a spare room into a mini studio for practice and can give pointers in terms of food for thought and what i have learned in relation to a small studio.

Here are a few things I would consider.

12ft x 12ft is not a lot of room for a rentable studio and what ever you decide to charge should reflect this.
Looking at your above image and like you say, the ceiling looks fairly low which will also need to be taken into consideration if you are going to rent it out.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider, is where will models be able to change? As I would think this will be it's main potential rental area?

The above factors will make the studio limited in terms of rental potential, but like everything in life it depends on what people want from a studio space and what they will be willing to pay.

I would do some homework on where the nearest studio is to yours, what does it offer and provide both in terms of space and equipment? How often is is used and by whom?

Think about who are you trying to target to use your studio, and how you will promote it? This will be really key to getting it off the ground.

Equipment wise personally I would take a look at Paul C Buff gear such as AlienBees, as they say "powerful, fast, accurate and versatile" I think they would really suite the studio and its size and provide a good starting point at a reasonable cost in terms of outlay.

As the studio is fairly small try to keep it looking clean and more spacious, if you fill it with gear it will eat up that space really quickly and reduce it functionality.

As you say, build up the equipment as people use the studio, have a feedback sheet with suggestions, that way you will get a better idea of what people want both in terms of lighting equipment and studio layout, props etc and show you are trying to meet their needs.

Sorry i can't provide you with the answers you are after, but I hope this will help you think of ideas and solutions.

a few tips to be found here link

TBH I think you are going to struggle with the ceiling height with antyhing other than head & shoulder portraits. I wouldn't use it. My studio is 30' x 40' with a 10' ceiling and I could do with higher sometimes. Given the size of a softbox your light will be at least 0.5M below the ceiling which I think is a bit low.

My studio kit is all Bowens and I have one 500 watt/second and one 200 w/s heads. You'll need a wide angle reflector for each head if you want to use brollies. The best brollies are the white shoot-throughs with the removable silver/blackcover.

You can find loads of Bowens fit modifiers on ebay for a lot less than genuine Bowens stuff.

My basic setup for portaits is the 500 with a big softbox as a key, the 200 with a snoot and honeycomb as a hair light and a big silver reflector for fill. If i'm using a white background I might overlight that with two Pentax hammerhead flashes.

Calumet is great source for all the various stands and clamps you'll eventually want. But I dont recommend their background paper rolls, the cardboard cores aren't as rigid as the Colorama ones and bend if they aren't in regular use. The paper then creases when you unroll it.

Bowens have a clearance shop on their website where you can pick up real bargains of old or refurbished stock.

It won't be any use without changing and toilet facilities.

Just about scrape by with head and shoulders, I've never been
a fan of full length portraits, but it could be a struggle
doing 3/4 length shots, which is a bit too formal anyway.

Casual shots sitting on the floor or on benches and posing
stools should be OK.... this is where the money is

Renting out could be a problem and you could get a lot of
complaints about the height restrictions etc. afterwards.

Would you need change of use planning permission. If so would
they turn it down because of such a low ceiling?

Become a sprog tog? Baby/infant photography could work in the space you have, with a suitable range of cute fluffy props of course. Might be more commercial than adult portraits. Need the right personality for it though, not everyone's cup of tea.

Just a thought.

If you are going to use the building as a studio, for your own personal use that’s one thing, but if you intend to rent it out, that’s a completely different ball game.

You will need to apply to your local authority, for change of use, a few things that will then be considered by the authority, will be sutability, which will include toilet facilities, the amount of extra traffic that will be generated, parking facilities, fire regulations, the list goes on. Any electrical equipment will need a “portable appliance test” certificate.

Not to mention the dreaded, business rates.

Take care.

Before you do anything else I would check with the planning officer and your title deeds. I'd hate to see you get closed down on day one for zoning issues.

And check your insurance.

You will almost certainly need planning permission.

But do not let that put you off. Shouldn't cost more than a few hours of your time.

Just noticed your question about how much to hire it out for. I was asking around for prices for hiring a studio because we needed to back a lorry up to the door which we cant do at mine. Seriously well equipped studios are about £50 for a half day.

Given the size of your space, 200 watt second heads will be OK otherwise you'll shoot everything at f64!

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply, we have taken a little from each post, very helpful.

Time for a bit more background methinks!

Basically, in the current climate, like everyone else, our shop (mobile unlocking and repairs) is not doing as well as it could, tied in with a completely unreliable supply chain, I need more income, plain and simple.

What I didn't (and still don't) want to do is just close the shop and open a studio, especially with the extra building sat there doing nothing, especially one with no running costs! Turning this into a studio for learning then extra income just makes sense.

Should the studio idea take off then the idea would be to transfer that over to the shop, turn the office back into an office where I just don't need that much room to unlock and repair phones. Doing it gradually rather than jumping in feet first would at least keep the bills paid!

Reading through these posts is making me realise (or giving me more of a kick up the backside if you like!) that I should be looking at accelerating these plans and actually using the shop space better than I currently do as I just don't need the room that I have to do what I currently do.

Advantages:

It is currently a retail unit so shouldn't need a change of use / rates / insurance etc.
There is plenty of dedicated parking.
There are toilet / kitchen facilities.
Credit card machine / Fibre Broadband / business phone line
It would be easy to move the stud wall and give us a small (but large enough) reception area and a studio space of 6.6m long, 3.1m wide and 2.5m high (or 21'8" long, 10'2" wide, 8'3" high!)
Could still book in existing work so no customers need to visit office.
Can be permanently on site for studio hire / help etc.
Could easily do long / evening hours that competition can't or won't do.
Could change opening hours to enable us to also shoot weddings etc.
Could do hourly rentals as permanently on site.

Disadvantages:-
Not that many I can think of actually other than lots of clearing out / selling off and lots of hard work!

Will continue with the plan to turn the office into a studio but now keep it for personal use / learning skills / practising on friends & family (who are all having babies and one runs a nursery! ), then when I'm comfortable and done my research I think a career change might be in order!

Please do keep it coming, you're all helping me get very enthusiastic!

PS Calumet is less than 20 miles away, so could be very handy!

Sounds and exiting venture Danny - will you change your username to studioboss?

Danny,
I think you are doing a brave and commendable thing. Whatever the reasons.
I agree with what the rest of the forum are saying. It seems rather low.
Similarly to what Ken has said we had a studio 40ft x 40 ft with 10ft high ceilings and at times that wasn't big enough. Annoyingly my partner did a huge amount of product shots that brought in some serious money and that took up very little room. However when we used to photograph models wearing jewellery for a diamond merchant then we needed loads of room. make up, stylist, hairdresser, client product manager plus a few hangers on and assorted layabouts and the place got very crowded.
One of our biggest costs was insurance, especially if it was for a 'leg' model (for modelling tights stockings etc)
or a hand model (nail varnish, rings etc) not to mention tea coffee sugar milk donuts. Loo rolls, tissues, have I mentioned donuts yet ? The list used to be endless so it emphasises a real need to keep a firm eye on the consumables. Plus we redecorated every year, all of it, main studio, reception, lounge area, toilets x 2 changing rooms x 2. Then there is the cost of donuts to consider.
I must admit that the whole thing became more and more of a nightmare the more we took on.
But would I do it all over again ? Yes if I was 20 years younger. I know all about the hassles and worries of running your own business I've been doing it now for over 20 years but there ain't nothing so great as working for yourself. Did I mention that Donuts can be a major expense.