Lighting on the cheap?

[PKMax]

thought I'd start a discussion on Lighting in here.. in particular.. cheap lighting for photography.

I've tried several ways of getting lighting, without going to the point of "Studio" lighting, mainly due to not being able to justify the costs of studio lighting at the moment.

so, my alternatives have been an combination of Bedsheets, big pieces of white card, muslin cloth and a window with lots of sun streaming into it.. this is how i've replicated a "White Studio" and have done several photos using this technique, but it does rely on really nice sunny day, and also for the light to be shining in that window, which for my bedroom is luckily on the right side for some great afternoon through to evening light.

I'm planning on getting a large light tent too, i've seen 2 that I want on ebay, one if a 4 Foot square unfoldable one for around £40, which you can use indoors with lamps or outdoors, and seems to fold up small enough to easily carry around with you, especially in the boot of a car anyways. this gives enough space to take some "white background" shots of photos, and can fit some pretty large things in, including kids.. but might be a bit cramped.. I have seen larger Light tents, which can be erected outside that are tall enough to stand in, i've been thinking about getting one of these too, they are around £70 ish.. you can use both of these outdoors for the best light, sunny days obviously a good thing for these, with the sun behind the object your shooting to make the whole tent glow bright white etc..



so, that's sunlight my other lighting i'm currently using is 2 desklamps, one of which is a halogen 50w bulb and the other is a 40w strip lamp which can give some nice even lighting.. i've been using these for macro and close up photography, useful mainly for objects that don't move, although I've put some white card behind and around the objects to reflect the light around in some cases to get more even lighting, and to get a nice white background where I didn't want black.



I have in the past used some of those 500w site lamps used for construction, which work quite well, but they do make the photos quite orange, and although you can white balance them afterwards the orange cast does seem to wash out a lot of the colours, would be more usefull for black and white photography I'd suspect. they are also frigging hot, and seem to burn out quite quickly.

I've been looking at some "Cheap" studio lighting which is around £100 a pop including stand and diffuser, these are permanent lighting rather than flash style, and they run off what appears to be energy saving bulbs lol, a lot of people have said they are good, you need a couple of them, and can attach brollies etc to them, planning on having a look into those.

Anyone else tried any particular lighting on the cheap?? any ideas for me to play with heh.

[tegan]

The answer to the orange cast of some lighting is a daylight filter on the camera which is blue.

Tegan

[PKMax]

I've not actually tried putting on a filter on the front, but from using the 500w construction lights I find that the image has more orange than anything else, would putting on a filter balance it back out to a range of colours? or just make it more blue-er? all of the photos I took with that lamp had to be black and white, because there was nowhere enough colour information in there, white balancing on the computer afterwards didn't make much difference.

I may have a daylight filter in my stash of filters, so could give it a try, but blew up the construction lamp heh, will have to get another of those

[mindforge]

You can probably change the bulbs in those construction lights.

[Marko]

You can get very cheap (less than 100 USD) vivitar flashes that are very practical
http://www.amazon.com/Vivitar-285HV-.../dp/B00004TVSP

[tomorrowstreasures]

The answer to the orange cast of some lighting is a daylight filter on the camera which is blue.

Tegan

So Tegan - Is that in relationship to color wheel theory? Since orange and blue are complimentary to the other so there fore it cancels the other out

[PKMax]

ooh, I'd not actually considered getting a flash like that, that's a very reasonable price too. I had assumed a flash unit would set me back a lot more than that.

and looks like I can get one in the UK for a similar kinda price too, around £50-60 ish Cheers

Can you easily mount these flashes off the camera? with like a sync cord? I know nothing about how hotshoe flashes work really, I've never had one.

[Marko]

Can you easily mount these flashes off the camera? with like a sync cord? I know nothing about how hotshoe flashes work really, I've never had one.

Yes you can : ) It won't work TTL, but it'll still work.

[tegan]

So Tegan - Is that in relationship to color wheel theory? Since orange and blue are complimentary to the other so there fore it cancels the other out

Long, long ago when film was still being used outdoor film was balanced for sunlight which is blue colour spectrum-wise. If you used outdoor film inside under incandescent light the result was that the colours took on a strong orange shade because the colour temp of incandescent lights is orange. The filter companies then put out a daylight blue filter in order for the photographer to use outdoor film inside under incandescent light with the proper colour balance...as in it took the orange shade out of all the colours.

Tegan

[PKMax]

had a quick look into the daylight filter, the Wratten 80A Color Conversion. Raises the color temperature, causing a 3200 K tungsten-lit scene to appear to be daylight lit, approximately 5500 K. so that could work nicely as far as I'm aware, most of the construction lamps are in the range of about 2500k-3000k ish. the Main reason I used them was because they cost £4 each lol. that's cheap, useful for some kinda of lighting, but frigging hot lol.

I also just had a play around in CS2, and just playing with the colour temperature on import of the Raw seemed to actually work.. but I have a feeling the last time I tried this I didn't actually have a raw processor, or adobe. so may not have had the tools *shrug* I'm sure I had some real issues with losing colour, but it appears to have gone away lol.