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Cheap lights: Will these work?

N

[nCn]Preacher

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 16, 2000
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Cheap lights. That's the focus of this beginners search. I want to build a mini-studio in a spare room of my house. The walls suck, the natural lighting sucks, the space is minimal but it is what I have to work with.

I was at home depot today and I was picking up a couple of lights so I could do some duct work in the attic. These are inexpensive, halogen lamps and they throw some serious light. As I put these in my cart along with the ducting, tim flashing etc, I started wondering if these would do double duty as studio lights.

Lights.jpg


A grand total of $27.85 for these three and they can completely light up a medium sized room. 2 are aimable for elevation and light enough to perch on just about anything including a tripod. The third has a clamp and a hanger so it is pretty flexible.

To diffuse the light so I don't get hard shadows, I have a bunch of lexan and plexiglass laying around from other projects and I was thinking of glazing the lexan to use as a diffuser.

Does this sound do-able?
 
Do-able but hot. If you're going to be taking pictures of people, they are not going to want to sit under them for long
 
Here is my first test. The camera is on a tripod in my junk room, everything on automatic and shots made with a remote.

Natural light coming from a window

Bear_NaturalLight.jpg


With 2 lights one, one bouncing from the ceiling and the smaller one pointed at an angle downwards toward the bear. You can see the hard shadows from the chair and the shadows under the chin.

Bear_BareLights.jpg


Last one is with a piece of glazed lexan difusing the smaller, downward pointing light and a piece of posterboard reflecting light from the lower unit towards the bear.

Bear_Diffused_and_Reflected.jpg



Here is a 1/2 lighted and 1/2 natural but the lighted half corrected to get rid of the yellow shift that the lights give the picture.

Bear_CorrectedColor.jpg


All in all, I would say my $30.00 studio lights are a success. Are they professional quality? No way, but they should do for the hobbyist. I think that with the third light pointing in from the left, I would be set. I didn't have another spare extension cord so I only used two.
 
Hah, I have a set of those lights I set up on the turn-around for when I play night basketball games.
 
I think it's a good place to start. I've actually used what looks like exactly the same model in the past (poor example, but it's all I could find). As PS-RagE pointed out, they put out an awful lot of heat and can therefore become very uncomfortable to work around. As you've seen in your test shots, the color is very yellow, too. Your eyes will eventually adjust to it, but your camera won't (easily corrected). Hard to beat for the price, though!

When you're looking to make a step up, you might want to check out AlienBees' Packages. I have not had any experience with them personally, but I know a few people who work with their equipment regularly and get fantastic results.
 
I have similar lights at my house, but because I don't have a studio I don't use them unless I'm going into a craw-space under the house, etc.

Your results look great though. The large diffuser certainly improves the look of the image IMHO.


BTW, do you shoot RAW and set color temperature during conversion, or are you using some white-point feature in PS to correct the yellow-cast (on a JPEG)? Ever since I moved into RSE for my RAW processing I've manged to get everything looking just awesome color-wise before it even goes into PS. Check it out; it's free and awesome. Link
 
Use thick, white cotten t-shirts as diffusers. Face them away from your subject and bounce the light off of large pieces of white cardboard. Get a backdrop.

You'll be fine :)
 
Tim_axe said:
BTW, do you shoot RAW and set color temperature during conversion, or are you using some white-point feature in PS to correct the yellow-cast (on a JPEG)? Ever since I moved into RSE for my RAW processing I've manged to get everything looking just awesome color-wise before it even goes into PS. Check it out; it's free and awesome. Link
Click to expand...

I haven't messed with the RAW shots much, thanks for the tip on that software. I just downloaded it and will check it out.
 
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