Cheap alternative to studio lighting?

I've just done some searching and found this page;

http://www.lonestardigital.com/affordable_lighting.htm

It's seems simple, cheap and although the 'pros' will probably scoff

at it, does anyone think it's a viable option, at least to begin

with? I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to construct some kind

of 'softbox' for them if required. What do you think?

I bought some of these a few years ago when the hardware store had a sale. I thought it would work for my still lifes and such. It did, sort of, but not without problems. On the plus side there is lots of light at a low cost. The light is very uneven so you have come up with a diffuser of some sort to avoid the real hot spots. You have to be very careful about any softbox or scrim because these babies get HOT! I mean be careful if you bump them with your elbow and have the first aid kit handy hot. They are not color balanced to any of the normal photo flood light color temps so if you do color you'll need to do some experimenting with filters. By the time you have done all this you're better off using a real photo lighting set up. I ended up putting these back in the garage where they belong when I got a Speedotron BrownLine set up on the used market quite inexpensively.

If you're using them for people photography where you need

a reasonably fast shutter speed, even small battery

operated flashes will provide more useful light (that

is, a smaller aperture with the same film). The

flashes will do it without stressing your home's

electrical wiring or breaker box, and they won't

make your models sweat, either. The cost is

in the same ballpark.

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If you want to build a softbox, be sure it is heat

resistant and very well ventilated. You don't want

the lamps to get much hotter than they would in open air.

Umbrellas may be more appropriate, since they allow ventilation.

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Beware of color balance issues.

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For B&W still life, virtually any lights will do,

and those hot lights may be fun to experiment with.

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See <a href="http://webs.lanset.com/rcochran/flash/hotorstrobe.html">

this page</a> for more reasons why most portrait studios use

strobes instead of hot lights.

I used these for a while. I pointed them into umbrellas and used a blue filter on the camera lens. The blue filter got the color ballance close enough for the printer to correct. This wouldn't work for slide film of course, but if you overexpose print film a bit it's not to hard to color correct enough to look natural.

 

I used about 2000 watts and 400 ISO film, but exposed as 250 ISO to make it easier to color correct. Shutter speeds were still kind of slow. As I recal, 1/8 seconds at f/5.6 or there abouts.

 

They sure did heat up the room though. Using flash is a lot nicer, and if you look at Richard Cochran's site you can find a way to do this with cheap battery powered flash units.

Yes very hot. I�ve lit cigarettes with them =)