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06/19/2007 07:36:31 AM · #1 |
Hi. I don't have an indoor studio, but would still like to put together an ad hoc set up until I can afford a more professional one. I'm thinking of the upcoming macro challenge. Suppose I want to photograph some detail on a product wrapper. What sort of lights that I might already have around the house (and how many) could I use? Should I aim the light directly on my subject or bounce it off of, say, white posterboard or some such? Any other considerations?
Thanks. Most of my photography up until now has been outdoors.
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06/19/2007 08:43:31 AM · #2 |
If you want to stick with around-the-house stuff, get some clamp lights from Home Depot. They run about $8 each, I think, and use a normal bulb. You can clamp them to anything, and they have a nice reflector. It's easy to make homemade softboxes for them, or to bounce them. (Or whatever lamps you have on-hand, they work just the same)
Aiming them directly at your subject will give you hard light: very bright, with harsh shadows. Bouncing or diffusing them with a piece of thin paper/cloth will make the light softer, and the shadows softer as well.
I used to use three clam lights and a homemade lightbox to shoot small objects. My first lightbox was a PVC pipe frame draped with a nice white cloth. My current one is a cardboard box with the sides cut out and replaced with tracing paper. Both methods are cheap, and provide nice, soft, wrap-around lighting.
You should check out Strobist - Lighting 101. Most of it is geared toward using hotshoe flashes off-camera for lighting, but the same principles apply to a constant light source. It's a great resource for learning how to work with lights, and is geared to be low cost. Almost everything there will work for a clamp light the same as for a flash unit, you'll just have to play with them to finess it.
Message edited by author 2007-06-19 08:44:05.
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06/19/2007 09:12:14 AM · #3 |
Do not use a normal bulb. in the light bulbs you'll find those spiral ones, look for the one that says daylight or natural light. they work Excellent in the clamp lights and are better than a normal bulb (not as hot either) Somewhere in the threads is a thread about the cardboard lightbox that Odyssey is talking about :)
Message edited by author 2007-06-19 09:16:36. |
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06/19/2007 09:24:46 AM · #4 |
Originally posted by OdysseyF22:
If you want to stick with around-the-house stuff, get some clamp lights from Home Depot. They run about $8 each, I think, and use a normal bulb. You can clamp them to anything, and they have a nice reflector. It's easy to make homemade soft boxes for them, or to bounce them. |
I concur.
As I always have said, and will continue to say, Home Depot is the poor mans lighting source.
If you just use your imagination, you can find not just clamp on lights, but a lot of different lights, with different color temperatures that will mimic %50 of the lights that I use at work.
Originally posted by Di:
Do not use a normal bulb. in the light bulbs you'll find those spiral ones, look for the one that says daylight or natural light. they work Excellent in the clamp lights and are better than a normal bulb (not as hot either) Somewhere in the threads is a thread about the cardboard lightbox that Odyssey is talking about :) |
You are limiting yourself if you just use day light balanced incandescents.
Tungsten balanced incandescents can warm up an image, and give a different look, as does daylight balanced globes.
Never say never when it comes to lighting.
We live in an imperfect world, and some of the best lighting shows that.
Message edited by author 2007-06-19 09:25:58.
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