jan_steinman

As you later point out, that's a huge "if!" Yes, in theory, anything can be put into practice. But in practice, not all theory can. :-) Use each for their strengths, or to avoid the weaknesses of the other. For cine, of course you need continuous light! And you can pay an arm and a leg to get "a certain look" that might be trivial to do for still photography with flash! The salient feature of most still photography is that it isn't expected to move much. I believe the original poster wanted to photograph quilts. To me, that screams "flash!" It seems the sole advantage of continuous light for photographing quilts is "what you see is what you get," which might have been worth a lot of time and money in the film days, but you can assess your flash exposure with one button push on most modern digicams. On the other hand, you can dump a lot more photons for a lot cheaper price with flash than with continuous. The OP was complaining about not having enough light. It seems to me that the OP can add light more cheaply with flash than with continuous lighting. Ain't a thing in this world that doesn't have both advantages and disadvantages. The trick is in balancing those so they work for you, not against you.

Another vote for Speedotron! They seem indestructible, which means there isn't much risk in picking up cheap, beat-up units on evilBay. The biggest problem they have seems to be with fans in the 102 heads. I've bought several for a bargain, only to find that the fan was slow, stopped, or made crazy noise. If you're handy, this is easily fixed. I've never seen a fan that was outright BAD; a good cleaning and lubrication and possibly some careful fan blade bending generally puts them good again. I have 10,400 joules of Speedotron packs. I use two 4800 Blackline units in the studio, but have a nice 800 joule Brownline that I dedicate to copy stand use. My Blackline packs look like a truck ran over them, but they just keep working! One thing to look out for on older Speedotron packs with the metal toggle switches is sync voltage. Be sure to use a Wein "safe sync" on them. I run all mine though cheap radio triggers, so there's no danger to the camera. But I still don't like to unnecessarily burn out radio triggers. It's also easy to adapt other heads to Speedotron. I've re-powered Profoto ring light, Fresnels, and other things. Just remember, the Speedotron trigger wire is always hot, so the trigger capacitor goes IN the head, unlike the first Profoto that I burned out the trigger coil on. :) This was done with a paper cove, two 102 heads in 3'x4' softboxes, and an 8" fresnel for specular highlights, all on a Speedotron 4800 pack.

No, but I like them. :-) I often shoot with two ginormous soft boxes and a Fresnel for specular highlights. That provides an effect that is difficult to achieve with hot lights.

As others have mentioned (and as yet others have poo-poo'd) LEDs are not an ideal solution for photographing art work, which I assume you want to be colour-accurate. I recommend you "invest in a better lighting kit." In particular, I'd get flash. I don't know about your softboxes, but with enough duct tape, you should be able to put an off-camera flash in one of the softboxes. So, you'll need at least one flash (two, if you can afford it) and the proper cables for using them off the camera. I use a pack/head system, but that may be beyond your needs, unless you do this often. You can get a couple "speedlights" (flashes designed to be mounted on the camera) and then get cables to use them off-camera from various sources that will work with your Nikon to do "through the lens" (TTL) light control. The "gold standard" for art reproductions is two softboxes with two flashes, oriented 45 degrees on either side of the artwork, unless the art is framed, in which case, use polarizing film on the flashes and a crossed polarizer on the lens. (I do fine art reproductions and art photography for a living.) Despite opinions to the contrary, the colour rendition problems with both CFSs and LEDs are real, but they may or may not be a problem for you!

It appears to be the same battery used by the Sunpak TR-2000 (which appears to be pretty much the same as the SHV-1) and is available from B&H and Adorama for US$75.