Piano Recording Home Studio

[Josue Cifuentes]

Hi all,

I am a videographer located in Germany and a first time poster. I come to you in hopes you can help me.

My wife is a classical pianist & teacher and we want to be able to make recordings of all the pieces she learns, to make tutorials and all sorts of things. 

We have a Medium Grand Piano at home in an otherwise small room, which forces us to come up with a solution that allows us to hang everything from the ceiling in order to not have anything laying around. 

There are 2 main issues we need to tackle:

What is the most suitable light for this job
How to hang light(s), camera and microphone in a safe and permanent way

The idea is that the set up is fixed in order to avoid too much preparation every time we want to record. We would only need to switch on the equipment and control it remotely.

The piano room (there was no Grand Piano 3D model, so I just put a table to show the total size). Window will be covered during recordings.

 

Light

I made a test using regular shooting setup (all in tripodes) to see what first problems would come, and this is the result:

As you can see in the picture, we want to see the keyboard as well as the inner structure. All this makes 144cm x 62cm.

 

To light this scene I used a friend’s Falcon Eyes LED Panel (45 x 60cm) / 100W - not fully dimmed, with a softbox. I placed the camera before the panel, right on top of the head of the pianist. You can notice the light is concentrated more in the middle, and this is what I would like to avoid.

 

I basically thought of two options: 

 

1. To use a LED Panel or Spot + Softbox with the similar size of the surface I want to lit

• Jinbei 200W (3,5 kg + softbox) with Softbox (70 x 140 cm) 

• FE Flexible Panel 121 x 24 100W (1,5 kg + softbox) with Softbox (or the double size version FE Flexible Panel 121 x 46 100W)

 

2. or to use 2 LED Panels. 

• Neewer 3x Led Panel 40W

 

For option 1, I wonder if it’s really necessary to have such a big size but I guess I would be safer that way. For option 2, I wonder if 40W each would be enough, and if it will be ugly with 2 shadows.

In any case, camera needs to be as far as possible (using a 35mm lens, but still needs distance), so maybe the bigger the light, the better?

Grip/Support

This is the issue I am most lost. I have experience in studio solutions, but they are too expensive and most of them allow for moving rails, which I don’t think I need.

What I came up with basically is, a metal bar in a wall-spreader like solution with a safety rig drilled to the ceiling, from which safety cables will hang down, to secure both the metal bar and the rest of the equipment.

Important to notice, the wall on the right is the one that separates apartments, so it’s strong. The one on the right is like a drywall, thin, so I guess it’s not totally reliable.

 

I made a sketch to show what I have in mind (sorry for the crappy graphics):

 

When I made the sketch I realized what the big issue will be. Which is, if I use a light with the same dimensions of the shot, I will have to put the camera beneath the light source. I guess that since it will be diffused, it won’t cast a hard shadow on the keyboard.

The other issue is how do I hang the two microphones. The position they need to be is more or less the one in the first picture, but how?

Here are a list of items that I thought about, but I hope you guys could give me more ideas. 

• Cross Beam This is what I thought to be the best solution, as I guess it can hold a lot of weight. The fact that it’s not a single bar but a structure, would allow to grip better the equipment? How to drill it to the wall?

 

• Neewer Triangle Wall Mounted Boom Arm (One of these for each equipment? Less messy, but still I would hang the safety cables from the ceiling)

 

• SPEED-RAIL® WALL SPREADER I wonder if I will have to bend it like here:

 

• (no need for moving parts) Ceiling System or something of the sort to be able to hand the safety cables.

 

That is all for now, probably there will be many more details to take care of, but considering these days the equipment is discounted due to Black Friday, I thought I would use the opportunity.

Thanks in advance for all your responses and help!

 

[Satsuki Murashige]

Hm, I like your test photo - yes, a larger light source will make the light flatter, but you risk it looking more visually boring (in my opinion). The current shot looks good to me!

If you did want to have a wider spread, you have several options:

1. Bounce the light into the ceiling (or put a large white card where the light is now, and bounce the light up into the card).

2. Move the light higher and put a diffusion screen between the light and the piano to get a larger source. 

3. As you suggested, use a bigger lighting unit or an array of units. Not sure this is really necessary unless you actually need more output from the lights than you are already getting. But bouncing and diffusing will reduce the output. 

 

Re: framing and avoiding camera shadow

If you place the light slightly upstage (further away from the camera, more like a toppy backlight), the camera shadow will fall behind you and not shadow the piano. Basically what you’ve already done with your test photo. A larger source will create a softer shadow so you should still be ok as long as the camera is not directly between the source and the subject.

Re: hanging/building a grid

If you’re shooting this close up and not seeing beyond the edges of the piano, then I think hanging the lights & camera isn’t really necessary. But if it makes things like cables neater and easier for you to manage, then go for it.

I would defer to our resident grip department folks on the best way to secure a cross beam or wall spreader, but for a semi-permanent installation I would suspect that you’ll want to find wall studs that you can drill into and secure the beam, as the tension-based solutions like Polecats will slip over time. Definitely don’t want lights and cameras falling onto your grand piano!

[Ed Conley]

This guy has a similar set up.
He has links to Microphone mounts and other clamps.

He uses only one Autopole but you could use two.

use one Autopole for lights and one for Microphones.