Posted by jimmyd: 
sorry, but this thread is becoming laughable. someone said a photographer uses a flashlight beamed through a purple CD jewel case and it works great and suddenly is color balanced for daylight?

uh huh.

here's some questions:

1. how many of you have clients? i mean people or companies, other than models and/or actors looking for headshots or port shots, who pay you to shoot?

2. of those of you who have such clients, how many of you drag out home depot lights? (cuz they're just as good as pro equipment, right?)

3. on the flip side, how many of you are using home depot gear for your clients's work, but only if the client isn't there?

4. if the client is present, how many of you hide the home depot lights and run out and rent pro equipment--not cuz it's better or more practical or more efficient--but only cuz you want to impress the client?

sorry we are not rich schmucks like you.  why you gotta be a bastered about it.  Some of us live in areas where mags cant find us, where there isnt even a clientel market.  Besideds, i dont really want a cleint.  I love what i do and could never accept money for it.

Also.  If you got the money and time, the you lug fucking $50,000 of lighting equpiment to an on-side shoot in the bottom of a powercompany's basment, oh... i forgot.... the company has be closed for 50 years so NO LIGHTS, CRAPPY STAIRS, AND CREEPY SOUNDS... sheesh...

Posted by Lesley Slenning: 

Posted by jimmyd: 
sorry, but this thread is becoming laughable. someone said a photographer uses a flashlight beamed through a purple CD jewel case and it works great and suddenly is color balanced for daylight?

uh huh.

here's some questions:

1. how many of you have clients? i mean people or companies, other than models and/or actors looking for headshots or port shots, who pay you to shoot?

2. of those of you who have such clients, how many of you drag out home depot lights? (cuz they're just as good as pro equipment, right?)

3. on the flip side, how many of you are using home depot gear for your clients's work, but only if the client isn't there?

4. if the client is present, how many of you hide the home depot lights and run out and rent pro equipment--not cuz it's better or more practical or more efficient--but only cuz you want to impress the client?

my question to you is where do people like me start?  no i don't have paying clients.....yet.  but i have to start somewhere.  i can't afford exspensive lighting equipment right now.  i am lucky to put gas in my car most of the time.  so for me this thread is not a joke, it's very helpful.  if my home depot lights get my foot in the door, what is so bad about that?  i am NOT going to give up doing something i love because i can't afford fancy equipment.

PREACH IT...

Oh, and I do have a friend that has the home depot stuff and has many a clients and has been published in a number of mags, also the guy who told me about the jewel case makes $70,000 using tricks like that, so it works, lol

Posted by Impure Angels: 
Also, they have daylight colour temp'd ones that also are flicker free and remain silent with a stable colour spectrum.

Well, just remember that this is photography. Not motion pictures. Hence, being "flicker-free" is not as essential. You are going to color-correct every shot anyway. Unless you are one of those snobbish morons who thinks that being a "real photographer" means having flawless shots right out of the camera.

(May I remind those "photographers" that people like Andrew Lesnie, the Academy Award winning cinematographer on Lord Of The Rings, applied digital grading to every second of film he shot.)

I come from the motion picture universe of lighting, so I love the fact that photography is 10 times easier to light. Why is it easier? Because:

#1 - Flicker-free is not important and slight variations in color-temperature are irrelevant too. Minor color-deviations will ALWAYS be corrected in post anyway (even if you're Andrew Lesnie).

#2 - If you have enough grips/PAs on set, lightstands aren't even important. Just have them hold stuff. A slight "jitter" in your lighting position won't matter in a still-frame of photography like it will in a movie.

Keep experimenting. You never need to spend a ton of money on lights. Expensive lighting gear does only 2 things:

1 - Makes the set up a lot easier.

2 - Impresses clients.

But it does NOT give you better quality photos. Ever. That comes from your creativity and ingenuity. A creative person with 2 Halogen lamps will light a scene far better than someone with a Glamour Shots studio setup.

Posted by Impure Angels: 
brokenhorse: That's a really nice photo, good job.
What was the wattage of your lights (in reference to your intensity?) I know its a very soft, spread light source, but I just cannot handle the heat of 1,000 or even 500w halogen work lamps.

Any other ideas?

Each tube was 40 watts. So 40wattsx8=320watts. Exposures were 400ISO, around [email protected]

Here's a pic of the actual light.



It emits an insignificant amount of heat. The tubes are warm to the touch but that's about it.

I like the idea of a continous light source but to get something decent requires a lot of money. I've rented HMI's before. They produce great results but way too expensive to own or rent ($15k+ to own, $750 a day to rent).

I was hoping the homemade setup would be my answer. Unfortunately, it's too weak and too cumbersome for my style of shooting.

-Chris

Posted by Eric Muss-Barnes: 

Posted by Impure Angels: 
Also, they have daylight colour temp'd ones that also are flicker free and remain silent with a stable colour spectrum.

Well, just remember that this is photography. Not motion pictures. Hence, being "flicker-free" is not as essential. You are going to color-correct every shot anyway. Unless you are one of those snobbish morons who thinks that being a "real photographer" means having flawless shots right out of the camera.

(May I remind those "photographers" that people like Andrew Lesnie, the Academy Award winning cinematographer on Lord Of The Rings, applied digital grading to every second of film he shot.)

I come from the motion picture universe of lighting, so I love the fact that photography is 10 times easier to light. Why is it easier? Because:

#1 - Flicker-free is not important and slight variations in color-temperature are irrelevant too. Minor color-deviations will ALWAYS be corrected in post anyway (even if you're Andrew Lesnie).

#2 - If you have enough grips/PAs on set, lightstands aren't even important. Just have them hold stuff. A slight "jitter" in your lighting position won't matter in a still-frame of photography like it will in a movie.

Keep experimenting. You never need to spend a ton of money on lights. Expensive lighting gear does only 2 things:

1 - Makes the set up a lot easier.

2 - Impresses clients.

But it does NOT give you better quality photos. Ever. That comes from your creativity and ingenuity. A creative person with 2 Halogen lamps will light a scene far better than someone with a Glamour Shots studio setup.

Hey, Eric
By no means am I one of "those" photographers, although obviously the less that needs to be corrected post-shoot, the better. I would also enjoy being able to shoot video with the same lighting, or at least minimal changes, in the future... But that was not my reason for saying that.

The reason I mentioned flicker-free is that I have a tendency to notice fluorescent flicker easily and it can bother my eyes after a while.

Also, I am not opposed to halogen, nor do I wish to make it a fluorescent versus halogen thread. It's merely a preference of heat output.

I would still love to find a low-heat option with halogens as they obviously put out a much harsher light and this would be mean better results for working with shadows for desired effects.

Any ideas for a good cheap halogen/fluorescent setup? Those halogen work lights that are 500-1000w won't work for me as I am usually shooting in confined spaces and the heat gets unbearable.

Posted by brokenhorse: 
I was hoping the homemade setup would be my answer. Unfortunately, it's too weak and too cumbersome for my style of shooting.

-Chris

Well, 40 watt fluorescents are pretty weak. Why not try to upgrade those to more powerful fluorescents and see how to that works for you?

Well, 40 watt fluorescents are pretty weak. Why not try to upgrade those to more powerful fluorescents and see how to that works for you?

I don't think they make daylight balanced tubes beyond 50 watts. Even if I used 50 watt tubes, it wouldn't be enough of a gain for my purposes.

Posted by Impure Angels: 
Any ideas for a good cheap halogen/fluorescent setup? Those halogen work lights that are 500-1000w won't work for me as I am usually shooting in confined spaces and the heat gets unbearable.

Well, to my knowledge, halogen and fluroescent are your only choices. I mean, unless you go out and get an HMI or something. Which is most likely too expensive to consider if you want things cheap.

You know, if you DO want to spend the money, good old Kino-Flos are the best fluroescent kits you can buy. They aren't cheap. But they are flicker-free, daylight balanced and they have a huge variety of banks to create just about any configuration you'd need. www.kinoflo.com

Posted by brokenhorse: 

Well, 40 watt fluorescents are pretty weak. Why not try to upgrade those to more powerful fluorescents and see how to that works for you?

I don't think they make daylight balanced tubes beyond 50 watts. Even if I used 50 watt tubes, it wouldn't be enough of a gain for my purposes.

Well, I haven't had a chance to look around, but I'm quite sure they do. It just depends on where you are getting them from. Places like Home Depot may not, but lighting stores may. I thought I saw once that they made them up to 150 watts, but those may be specialty ones only... Or I may be incorrect.

As for the GE website, they mention some useful info, on bother regular Fluorescents and Compact ones. But yes, most stores carry the residential ones, which go up to 55w on average but equal that of 250-300 watts incadescent.

http://www.gelighting.com/na/home_light … difference

Some good info.

Posted by F.Y. Hamada: 

Also it's more possible now due to DIGITAL camera where you can white balance to that AWFUL green hue of storebought flourescent lights. 

You can get very accurate daylight balanced flourescents these days at Home Despot for the price of the heinous green ones.  I use a light booth made with them for checking printer output and another set to give me consistent lighting for editing.  If I remember, they balance in at 5000K, and the spectrum is relatively even across the whole range.

Posted by John Paul: 

  The reason why I bought a bunch of lighting gear is because I wanted stuff that was more oriented to setting up and tearing down, more powerful, had much more use in it's system of accessories, and much more reliable..

  JP

Same reason I bought my lighting setup.  When I decided I wanted to start doing studio work in controlled light situations, I started out with a lot of brilliant home-brew ideas, but found out rather quickly that I couldn't transport a lot of it easily (important since I DON'T have a studio or even a decent basement to work in), because it was difficult to set up and tear down, and because a lot of it was flourescent banks that were too big to go in the back of my car.  Sold a bunch of old camera gear that I wasn't using very often and a few other things, and bought monolights.  Much, much easier to set up and take down, can get the whole setup in my car.

As to alien bees and white lightning - I did a lot of number pushing, and found that they weren't such an incredible deal.  Hensel, Elinchrom, and Photogenic all have equivalent light output lights within a few bucks of the ABs, which is less than the white lightning.  I've shot in a situation where we moved back and forth between ABs, Elinchrom, and Profoto, and there really was a significant difference in evenness of light, consistency of color temp, and even more, brightness and accuracy of the modeling lights.  That made me step back and start trying to see if I could make the same money for an AB setup build one with higher end lights.

If you watch the big stores, there are sales and open box units come up from time to time.  Hensel's doing a complete two light monolight system right now for less than an equivalent AB setup.  I ended up putting together a three monolight 2400ws total Elinchrom setup, with boxes, brollys, and stands for less than the equivalent White Lightning setup that I'd priced out, and about $200 more than the equivalent AB setup.  Took me three months of hunting and shopping.  Could have done an equivalent Photogenic system for less than AB, from almost any of the big NY stores, but I needed the short flash duration for shooting dancers in flight.

Paul Buff's shops really aren't such a price deal anymore.  The stands and light modifiers in particular are much more expensive than you can do elsewhere.

Posted by jimmyd: 

Posted by Light Sketch: 
i have studio lights.  most of my stuff is done with 500 watt tungten lights.  i just like using them.  i like the warm tones and the fact that what i see i get.

i'm hearing about more and more guys shooting with hot lights and doing so for some higher-end assignments. a shooter i know who shoots a lot of magazine stuff for LFP/Hustler has been shooting almost exclusively with hot lights lately.  i shot the image below, trying to mimic the 40's hollywood glam style, using a couple of mole 1k babies w/fresnel lenses and some foamcore. i'm a videoographer as well and, of course, hot lights are a way of life in film and video.

It's nice to see I am not the only photographer here who also does video. I am surprised no one has mentioned Ikea. The have tons of really nice lights that can be used for photo/video . My first set of lights I owned was photoflood kit from Adorama (less than a hundred dollars at the time). It came with 3 stands and 3 light fixtures (essentially clamp lights) , three 500 watt photoflood bulbs and one umbrella attachment. 10 years later I am still using it now and then. I still take it with me on video shoots as a backup. The company I freelance for has thier own  lighting kits for video , but I like bringing mine anyway because I can use them for nice little accent effects etc... I had to shoot an interview of an actor as behind the scenes content for a low budget film . It was short notice and I didnt have time to get higher end lighting lights to use. I ended up using my Adorama kit. I used two 250 watt photo floods a blue filter and an improvised reflector.    This the first time I am embedding an image link in a post. If it works you will see how the actual video lighting turned out in the still I shot as a reference. I also recently made a "$14 Steadycam rig" more on that later. Its not really the equipment so much as what you can do with it.

Steve



Actor Joel Wiess

Posted by Robb Radford: 
Cheap Stobe set http://www.briteklight.com/psbeginningkit.html usually they are on sale for $250 they also make a battery operated strobe that a friend got and I used and it worked out pretty good.

If you can live with inconsistent color temps from shot to shot, and are not going to be pounding them every day, the Britek's might be just fine.  By and large, like the rest of the world, you do get what you pay for.

If you're a Nikon owner, consider the SB-800 system.  Freaked me out completely how well it works, four channel wireless flash you can put in your back pocket.  Read about a couple guys through the Nikon Pro web site who are now carrying 20 or 30 SB-800 instead of monolights.  You can put 30 of them in a small suitcase, gang them on a single channel when you need lots of light.  And talk about having redundancy for backup...

Posted by F.Y. Hamada: 
Oh, and my lighting rig?  All home built.

You're doing amazing work.  I've only run into one other guy using hot lights and film who came close.  As for myself, I've spent a few bucks but most of my lights and modifiers came from eBay (five Photogenic's).  Learning to use them was the trick for me.  Keep it up!

Paul

Posted by Inerlogic: 
i started out with one clamp light and a 100 watt GE reveal bulb.



then i bought a second clamplight



next i splurged for two 500Watt halogen work lights from home depot, i picked up microphone stands from radioshack (i was working there at the time and got a GREAT deal on some returned ones with cast iron bases...) a bike inner tube and 4 hose clamps, boom, adjustable halogens



they can even be white balanced.... and RAW format is your friend

Change  your < to [ and your > to ] then the links should work.

Posted by Mike Cummings: 
Change  your < to [ and your > to ] then the links will work.

yah, i went searching and found the place uses bbcode... how quaint

thanks for the help anyway

Posted by Inerlogic: 

Posted by Mike Cummings: 
Change  your < to [ and your > to ] then the links will work.

yah, i went searching and found the place uses bbcode... how quaint

thanks for the help anyway

Don't thank me yet.. I am not sure I have it right..

Posted by Mike Cummings: 
Don't thank me yet.. I am not sure I have it right..

yah,
instead of:

it should be [ img ]linktoimage[ /img ] (without the spaces)

Posted by Inerlogic: 

next i splurged for two 500Watt halogen work lights from home depot, i picked up microphone stands from radioshack (i was working there at the time and got a GREAT deal on some returned ones with cast iron bases...) a bike inner tube and 4 hose clamps, boom, adjustable halogens

Ok gotta know. What was the inner tube for?

Posted by Mike Cummings: 
Ok gotta know. What was the inner tube for?

well, i am a great fan of mapplethorpe and michael rosen....
*cough*

ermm... the inner tube, when cut into 4" or 5" strips, one over the mike stand, the other on the frame of the worklight, makes a nice grippy slip free surface for the hose clamps to grab.... two round metal surfaces (the mike stand and the bar around the worklight) don't really like to be held together by hose clamps on their own, they slip and slide and paint gets all screwed up...

i'd post a picture of the setup, but it's currently at my girlfriend's jewelry studio....

Posted by Inerlogic: 

Posted by Mike Cummings: 
Ok gotta know. What was the inner tube for?

well, i am a great fan of mapplethorpe and michael rosen....
*cough*

ermm... the inner tube, when cut into 4" or 5" strips, one over the mike stand, the other on the frame of the worklight, makes a nice grippy slip free surface for the hose clamps to grab.... two round metal surfaces (the mike stand and the bar around the worklight) don't really like to be held together by hose clamps on their own, they slip and slide and paint gets all screwed up...

i'd post a picture of the setup, but it's currently at my girlfriend's jewelry studio....

Bless you man... I have been using a bolt stuck in the clamp to wedge it. The inner tube is just what I need.. Thanks

Posted by Mike Cummings: 

Posted by Inerlogic: 

Posted by Mike Cummings: 
Ok gotta know. What was the inner tube for?

well, i am a great fan of mapplethorpe and michael rosen....
*cough*

ermm... the inner tube, when cut into 4" or 5" strips, one over the mike stand, the other on the frame of the worklight, makes a nice grippy slip free surface for the hose clamps to grab.... two round metal surfaces (the mike stand and the bar around the worklight) don't really like to be held together by hose clamps on their own, they slip and slide and paint gets all screwed up...

i'd post a picture of the setup, but it's currently at my girlfriend's jewelry studio....

Bless you man... I have been using a bolt stuck in the clamp to wedge it. The inner tube is just what I need.. Thanks

yeh.... my GF and her business partner gave me funny looks when i pulled out the inner tube... i've been thinking outside of boxes since before it was "cool"