Category making things

My workbench, all lit up…
(Click for more.)

Well, one of the other things I did today was get my hacked together lighting rig (photo gallery retired) put together and give it a try. Well, it seems to work. (The photo in my last post was taken using it.)

In the end, I have a setup which I metered (using the Photoshop Camera Raw plugin and a grey card) at 4900K, which is just great for my purposes.

The setup was made using four Sunwave 30W compact fluorescent bulbs which I’d ordered ordered from Cindy at Cloud Dome for a pretty reasonable price. The bulbs are fairly large and well made, and fit fairly nicely into the clip-on flood lights I purchased from Home Depot.

To diffuse the light, I took four sheets of Roscolux 116 ‘Tough White Diffusion’ gel, cut them down to 12″ x 12″ squares, and clip them in front of the lamps by the corners, forming a puffed out box. I found that if make marks 2″ in from the corners and clip along the line formed between these points, things work out rather well.

In the end I’ve got four rather workable lamps which seem to provide some pretty even lighting. I may want another four down the line, but at a total of about $100 for all the parts needed to make this (the lamps themselves are by far the most expensive and inaccessible parts) I’ll have to hold off on this for a bit.

The only other change I may make is in the size of the gels used. I think that I may be losing some light to the sides and rear of the fixture with the gels billowing out slightly as they do. I imagine if I used 10″ squares instead, I may get more light on the work surface… Oh, and then I’d also get all four pieces needed for a project like this out of one 20″ x 24″ sheet of gel.

Here is the first test image from my hackjob photo lighting rig. It has been white balanced, the saturation turned up to +2, and cropped somewhat. Best I can tell, (thanks to Photoshop’s Camera Raw plugin and clicking on a grey card) the lights are putting out ~2850 light, which I’m able to compensate for, even though it’s really, really low. Also, I can’t help but think I’m blowing out the side of the bottle with the way the lights are setup right now. I think they need to be moved or I need to get a soft box or something.

suggested dollar store clothes hampers, so I may try them… I might also take the bulbs back and see if I can find some hotter ones. The light off of these is just too warm by default. If you look at this uncorrected photo of my grey card you can see just how yellow the lighting is. It’s correctable, but it seems to me that with such a drastic correction, some color range is lost. I… think that too much correction for too warm of colors decreases the range available for reds and yellows? (Must read up on this some more…)

Anyway, if you are curious, this is how I have it set up for now, although I have tried moving the lamps around to the sides of the bench, and changing the angle at which the backdrop hangs. Most importantly, I think I first need to get decent temperature bulbs, then some sort of soft box, either for the lamps or to put the object being photographed in. We’ll see…