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I'd done three commercial shoots in Nottingham before I found the studio scene properly. The first two were brought in by clients with local suppliers already lined up. The third, I had to find something myself — and that's when I started mapping what Nottingham actually has.

The honest picture: it's smaller than Manchester and a lot smaller than London, but there are a handful of genuinely good spaces. Redtree is the one most working photographers end up at eventually. But it's not the only option, and depending on what you're shooting, it might not be the best one for your brief.

Redtree Photography Studio

Central Nottingham, the most established dedicated photography space in the city. The main studio runs to approximately 10.5 metres by 5 metres — so 52 square metres of shooting space, which is a decent footprint for a non-London city studio. Not a cyclorama in the traditional sense, but with a usable backdrop roll system and enough floor depth to work with a full-length subject and a camera at 5–6 metres.

Hire rates: £25/hr as a standard rate, which is competitive for a central UK city studio. There's a £50 processing fee attached to bookings — something to factor in when you're comparing hourly rates across studios, because that adds to the effective cost of shorter bookings. A two-hour session with all usable images included is listed at £149, which works out as part hire, part production package. The classroom and open area (approximately 10m by 5m) can be hired alongside the main studio for larger productions.

The equipment package varies by booking type but includes lights and backgrounds as part of the hire. For commercial work where you're bringing your own kit, confirm exactly what's included and what access you have to studio infrastructure — grip, power sockets, rigging options — before you commit. The space is well suited to portrait, fashion, and smaller product shoots. For automotive or large-format commercial work, the footprint is limiting.

AOU Studio

Worth knowing about for a specific kind of brief: the AOU Studio runs to 1,000 square feet (roughly 93 square metres), which makes it significantly larger than Redtree. It's equipped with Godox studio flash heads, beauty dishes, softboxes, and an assortment of background systems including continuous background paper rolls. On the practical side: private toilet, kitchenette, free parking, and WiFi. For a self-contained shoot day where you need a large footprint without importing your own flash kit, this is a strong option.

The Godox kit is worth a note. Godox studio flash heads have come a long way in quality — the AD600 series in particular is a legitimate production tool now, not just a budget alternative. If you're used to shooting Profoto B10s or Broncolor Siros packs, the workflow transition is minimal once you've tested the output consistency. For catalogue work, editorial, or any job where you're controlling the output spec rather than using the studio's preferred settings, Godox gear works reliably at commercial quality.

Price isn't published prominently for AOU Studio, so a direct enquiry is the right move before building a budget around it.

Bodyline Photographic Studios

One of the longer-established studios in Nottingham. Bodyline has been there long enough to have a reputation with local photographers that predates most of the newer arrivals. The hire rate is listed at £25/hr — matching Redtree's headline figure — and the equipment spec includes a Bowens setup, Elinchrom heads, and a 3000-head Octa box, which is a decent combination for portrait and fashion work without importing your own pack.

Bowens and Elinchrom are both reliable studio flash systems, though Bowens had some ownership turbulence in the late 2010s before new ownership stabilised the brand again. The Elinchrom units in particular — if they're the Quadra or ELC Pro series — are solid workhorse flash that most commercial photographers can operate comfortably without a steep learning curve.

Bodyline is primarily portrait and beauty focused based on its history and presentation. For commercial product or fashion work, it's a usable space. For automotive or large-set work, the footprint won't support it.

Unit19Studio — Sherwood

The odd one out on this list, geographically: Unit19 is in Sherwood rather than the city centre, which puts it slightly off the Nottingham studio circuit but gives it a different character. Natural light plus strobes, competitive rates, and a presentation that feels slightly more independent-photographer oriented than the more commercial-facing options above.

I haven't shot there personally, but the studio has good feedback from portrait and music photographers in the East Midlands specifically. If you're doing band shots, artist headshots, or anything where a slightly more raw, less polished studio feel is an asset, it's worth a look. The natural light availability is the main distinguishing feature — most Nottingham studios I've seen are primarily artificial-light setups, so a space with genuine daylight is worth flagging.

Comparing Nottingham to the East Midlands context

If you've read anything about East Midlands studio hire elsewhere, the broadest option in the region is Kinetics Studios in Kirkby-in-Ashfield — a larger-scale production facility that's accessible from both Nottingham and Derby. For full commercial production days requiring a proper cyc, drive-in access, or 3-phase power, Kinetics is worth the 20-minute drive north from Nottingham city centre. It's a different scale of facility from any of the studios listed above.

For portfolio days, test shoots, smaller editorial or commercial briefs, and anything where you want to stay in the city, the Nottingham options work well. The city centre locations (Redtree, AOU) have the advantage of proximity to train connections — Nottingham has regular fast trains to London St Pancras, which matters if you're bringing a London-based crew and shooting for a regional client.

Rates in context: Nottingham vs other cities

The £25/hr headline rate at both Redtree and Bodyline is meaningfully below London equivalents. A comparable space in Hackney Wick or Bermondsey would be £55–£75/hr for a similar footprint and equipment package. Even Manchester, which often gets cited as the affordable alternative to London, runs £40–£60/hr for equivalent commercial studios.

The Nottingham rate reflects a real market pricing difference, not a quality gap. The studios are professionally run and properly equipped for the work they're positioned to handle. For a budget-conscious commercial client or a photographer looking to run portfolio days without London rates, the East Midlands is genuinely undervalued.

What Nottingham is missing

There's no obvious large-format cyclorama in the city itself. No drive-in option within the city centre. No studio with the kind of rigging infrastructure you'd need for complex multi-light commercial productions. For that level of brief, you're going to Kinetics in Kirkby, to Leeds (45 minutes north), or to London.

That's a real gap in the Nottingham market, and one that'll probably be filled eventually as the creative economy in the East Midlands grows. For now, the city has what it has: a solid set of portrait and commercial studios at rates that make the trip worthwhile from nearby cities, and nothing at the scale of a full production facility.

Transport and logistics: why Nottingham works for regional shoots

One thing I genuinely like about shooting in Nottingham: the rail connections are better than people outside the East Midlands expect. London St Pancras to Nottingham via East Midlands Railway is just over 1 hour 40 minutes. For a London-based photographer shooting a Midlands client's campaign on a day trip, that's a feasible morning train, shoot, and evening return — without the overnight hotel cost that a Leeds, Manchester, or Edinburgh trip usually requires.

From the other direction, a Nottingham photographer commuting to London for a studio booking is doing about the same journey. The relative cost of hiring a Nottingham studio at £25/hr versus travelling to London and hiring at £75/hr means the break-even on the travel cost is quite fast. Two hours of London studio time at £75/hr is £150. The train return from Nottingham is currently around £35–£60 depending on advance booking. If the Nottingham studio covers your technical requirements, the maths don't particularly support the London trip.

For crew days with multiple people and equipment, Nottingham also has reasonable road connections — the M1 cuts north-south, A52 runs east-west to Derby and Grantham. Loading a transit van and driving to Nottingham from Birmingham, Leicester, or Sheffield is a 30–60-minute drive on most days outside rush hour. The city isn't London, but it's not inaccessible from the surrounding region either.

Kinetics Studios: the East Midlands production facility option

If the Nottingham city studios aren't large enough for your brief, Kinetics Studios in Kirkby-in-Ashfield is the next step up in the region. It's 20–25 minutes north of Nottingham by car, and it operates at a scale none of the city studios match — proper production facility infrastructure, larger footprint, and a reputation among East Midlands commercial production teams that goes back a number of years.

For automotive work, large-set builds, or anything requiring a serious cyclorama and serious power supply, Kinetics is the East Midlands option. The studios in Nottingham city are not the right answer for those briefs, and knowing that Kinetics exists means you're not stuck choosing between compromising on studio spec and travelling to Leeds or London.

What a Nottingham studio booking typically looks like

In practice, a standard commercial day in a Nottingham studio — let's say Redtree for a portrait and product day, 7 hours — runs to roughly £175 plus the £50 processing fee, so £225 total. Compared to a comparable London day at £65–£75/hr (£455–£525 for 7 hours), you're looking at a saving of £230–£300 on the studio hire alone, before factoring in parking, travel, and crew expenses that differ between the two cities.

For Nottingham-based clients and production companies, this isn't news — they know local rates. For London photographers considering a trip for a regional brief, it's worth running the numbers explicitly. The saving on studio hire often absorbs the travel cost and then some, even before you account for the lower day rates on East Midlands-based crew and freelancers.

The Nottingham creative scene context

Nottingham has a design school attached to Nottingham Trent University and a modest but real creative community — graphic designers, illustrators, agencies, photographers, and videographers who work locally and occasionally pull in London work. That community is part of what sustains the studio scene: enough regular local bookings from agencies, brands, and freelancers to keep a small number of dedicated photography studios viable.

The studio scene doesn't have the critical mass of Manchester or Bristol, where a larger creative economy supports a more diverse studio offering. But it's not a blank canvas either. The spaces that exist in Nottingham have mostly been running long enough to be past their teething problems, which tends to mean more predictable hire experiences than the crop of brand-new studio launches that appear periodically in larger cities.

Browse photography studios in Nottingham and across the East Midlands at creativestudiohire.com.

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