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DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> Lighting - Newb Question Enclosed
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11/17/2007 02:00:38 AM · #1
Hi everybody!

After a lot of reading and what not I decided to pick up some work lights from Home Depot so I can work on photography projects after work at home. I'm feeling really frustrated because I was sort of hoping that the lights would make a big difference, but they seem to do almost nothing. I still need to use my flash to properly expose my shots, and I'm not seeing a lot of difference between lights + flash and flash alone except in color temperature.

I admit I was hoping to not have to use my flash at all - am I supposed to expect to still need it? And should I be expecting to see a large difference?

I'm convinced I'm missed some important and obvious detail, but it's beyond me what it is!

Thanks!
11/17/2007 02:16:54 AM · #2
Hey Charlene,
I think that it may help us to understand what you are needing to know if you could post some examples, along with your camera settings.

E
11/17/2007 02:49:27 AM · #3
I use shop lights, and nearly no flash, although I recently picked one up... anyway,

Let us know your lighting set up, the types of shop lights you are using, and all the other yummy details and we can do more to help you out.

Once you get the hang of it, you will be happy, but it does take some trial and error, or a bit of examples and questioning.
11/17/2007 03:50:43 AM · #4
i bought a home depot shop light once just because i was astonished at how cheap it was (something like $10) and it used standard (tripod) threads to mount!

a 100-300 watt halogen bulb like you'll find in one of these is very bright for purposes of illumination, but it is very dim by photography standards. light is light, but you will probably still have to expect to shoot longer exposures on a tripod.

my first "real" lights were a pair of lowel tota floods. each one was 750 watts. even with all that light i would have trouble with handheld shots. the problem was worse because my lenses at the time were also cheap (more expensive lenses tend to have faster maximum apertures which require less light). and every time you bounce the light off anything or shoot it through a diffuser to improve its quality you are losing at least a stop or 2.

you can always buy a whole bunch of home depot lights, they are cheap enough. every time you double the number of lights, you have gained a stop. and you can try to get the lights as close to your subject as possible. halve the distance between the light and the subject and you have gained 2 stops. but this is difficult to do with halogens because they get very hot even at weak wattages. without a brightness control, your only choice for fine-tuning the exposure from a light like this is to move it closer/further to/from your subject.

another factor to consider with shop lights is that they are not designed for photography. as such, the light control is probably nonexistant. they barf out light inefficiently in a broad throw. you might be able to make more strategic use of them by making a snoot out of aluminum foil. it is easy to mold around irregular shapes, it is light-tight, and it cools off quickly.
11/20/2007 01:25:53 PM · #5
Thanks for all the replies! It sounds like magnumruss's experience is really similar to mine... I took a LOT of test shots, so I'll upload them when I get home from work! Oddly enough, it seemed that when I turned the lights to point everywhere but at him, I got better exposure... it was weird.

Some quick details, though - I have 1 pair of 250 watt halogen lights on a stand and a pair of 500 watt lights on a stand, as well. I thought using all these would be a huge difference, but not much. I had bought a single 500 watt worklight awhile ago and for some shots, it really seems to make a huge difference!

Luckily, my shoot was rescheduled, so I have a little time to fine tune my techniques!
11/20/2007 02:04:15 PM · #6
Some further explanation. If you compare a 500wattsecond studio flash, with a 500W tungsten light for example, the flash produces the same amount of energy in one pop that the tungsten light in 1 second (hence the watt.second name)

So if you take your picture at an exposure of, say, 1/200th (of a second), the tungsten light will give you 200 less light than the flash.

So either you would need to buy 200 lights, or buy one 100,000W light, or need to compensate with higher ISO, longer exposure, smaller aperture etc.

That's a bit simplistic, because it does not take into account the efficiency of the equipment (how efficiently they transform energy into light), but ball park you get the point.

more details here
//webs.lanset.com/rcochran/flash/hotorstrobe.html

Message edited by author 2007-11-20 14:17:39.
11/21/2007 10:59:20 AM · #7
Originally posted by magnumruss:

you can always buy a whole bunch of home depot lights, they are cheap enough. every time you double the number of lights, you have gained a stop. and you can try to get the lights as close to your subject as possible. halve the distance between the light and the subject and you have gained 2 stops. but this is difficult to do with halogens because they get very hot even at weak wattages. without a brightness control, your only choice for fine-tuning the exposure from a light like this is to move it closer/further to/from your subject.

There's a limit that depends on how many AC circuits you have. I have a couple of 1500W worklights, and have to run them off of separate circuits.

Also, the color temperature of the worklights is low. You may have trouble with blues -- ie the worklights emit light in the red-orange part of the spectrum and if there's no blue light, the camera sensor can't record it :-)

If you use the worklights and have daylight coming in from a window, parts of your image will be lit more by one type of light than the other. I recommend the OP do some research on "mixed lighting", "color temperature" and CRI.

Message edited by author 2007-11-21 10:59:40.
11/21/2007 11:29:20 AM · #8
Light falls off with the square of the distance between light and subject, so the falloff is exponential. Unless you are doing close-up work and can move floodlights/worklights in pretty close, you are going to have to work with relatively slow shutter speeds with these lights.

If you want to use faster shutter speeds, you have no choice but to move up to strobe lighting. Your on-camera flash is a low-output strobe light, BTW. It is, of course, severely limited in its usefulness by the fact that it is straight-on, lens-axis lighting and is pretty unflattering to most subjects.

R.
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