Studio work on zero budget?

ecphotoman

I've been playing around with speedlights on light stands with umbrellas. It's a lot of trial and error, but it works. Anyway, I was browsing cowboystudio.com the other day and found some continuous lighting kits. They use the same stands, brackets and umbrellas, but with CLF bulbs. I haven't been able to find a whole lot about these online, any thoughts?
The reason this sounded good to me, is that at the moment buying a meter is out of my price range lol.

divamum

Stick with speedlights. More portable and just as useable IMO. You already have a meter... in your camera www.strobist.com if you don't already know about it...

ecphotoman

divamum wrote: »

Stick with speedlights. More portable and just as useable IMO. You already have a meter... in your camera www.strobist.com if you don't already know about it...

I watched Matt Granger's series on strobist photography on youtube and starting trying it out. It really cool, especially for environmental portraits.

How do you feel about the manual speedlights coming from china for about $40? I've been using my 430EXII, but it would be nice to give it a break lol.

divamum

The Chinese ones are fine (although a lot of people say they do die, so you may replace them more often than OEM gear). I personally don't use them because they didn't work with my Canon IR triggers and I found some good deals on Canon flashes (one used, one on rebate sale etc etc), but there's nothing wrong with them. I have Pixel King triggers which are kind of "high end" Chinese import (and a very affordable alternative to Pocket Wizard or Radio Poppers). For all-manual, the cheap Cactus and the like triggers are fine, and can get you started for low cost.

Again, all of this is discussed in mind-boggling detail over at strobist.com. Read lighting 101 and you'll be in great shape to get started

ecphotoman

divamum wrote: »

The Chinese ones are fine (although a lot of people say they do die, so you may replace them more often than OEM gear). I personally don't use them because they didn't work with my Canon IR triggers and I found some good deals on Canon flashes (one used, one on rebate sale etc etc), but there's nothing wrong with them. I have Pixel King triggers which are kind of "high end" Chinese import (and a very affordable alternative to Pocket Wizard or Radio Poppers). For all-manual, the cheap Cactus and the like triggers are fine, and can get you started for low cost.

Again, all of this is discussed in mind-boggling detail over at strobist.com. Read lighting 101 and you'll be in great shape to get started

Awesome thanks a bunch Diva! I appreciate the advice!
I saw the pixel king triggers on ebay, they work similar to PW?

ziggy53

divamum wrote: »

Stick with speedlights. ...

^^^^ I agree.

Daylight balanced compact fluorescent are OK now for objects that don't require tight color balance, but I don't think they are quite ready for most portraiture or other applications which require more subtle and accurate tonality. The reason is that inexpensive daylight balanced compact fluorescent phosphors are still not a complete continuous spectra.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lights#Phosphors_and_the_spectrum_of_emitted_light

Compare this to a true daylight spectra:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Life_on_Earth

For some product lighting I have used compact fluorescent bulbs with a fairly high CRI (Color Rendering Index) rating (CRI 95 or better). The color isn't perfect but for subjects that don't need perfect color it can work pretty well.

Here's an example:

http://dgrin.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=24548&d=1217963525

Additionally, fluorescent bulbs have one intensity; they are either on or off. Yes, you can gang them in a multiple outlet fixture which has multiple switches so that you can have some on and others off, but flash typically gives you better control.

ThirdDayImaging

If you make sure that the CRI for all the bulbs you use is 95 or higher, you can get amazing results with softboxes and/or bare bulb reflectors. I really put this to the test recently by taking on some large group studio shots. With large groups the main goals are to get everyone lit well, everyone with their eyes open, and possibly everyone smiling. If you can get all that with a group of ten or more - you've done well.

As you may know, softboxes are only effective if you can get them very close to the model/subject. So softboxes are out for large groups. So the question is, how does continuous florescent lighting fair in large groups with the diffusion screens removed? My answer is, very well if used correctly.

The group shot below is purely to demonstrate the potential power of continuous lighting. You're looking at about 4000 total watts of cool light ar about 1:2 ratio, including a 300 watt hair light.



A lot of different colors and skin tones - very challenging. No eyeglasses though, woohoo!