Initial Tests With DIY Continuous Fluorescent Lighting

I've been very intrigued by the concept of continuous fluorescent lighting and would love to have a basic setup for portraits and head shots but the issue of power keeps coming up. I decided to do some simple experiments just to see what would happen. Of course I am using an inanimate object so there's no chance of any motion blur but all in all my experiments are somewhat encouraging.

I didn't want to buy or build anything just yet so I took 5 clamp-on fixtures with 6" aluminum parabolic reflectors and clamped them right on to the reflector of an Alien Bees strobe and placed them behind a 45" white translucent shoot-through umbrella. I'm using 100 watt bulbs.

Suprisingly, I was able to shoot the samples at ISO 400, f/4, 1/60s. Considering the umbrella wasn't even as close as it could or would be, that's not too bad. Doubling the light and close lighting would be quite usable for tight head shots and portraits.

I don't think this is practical lighting for anything other than tight shots with close lighting because of the power limitations but when used for this type of shot the light seems quite nice.

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TMR Design wrote in post #4428866
I'm using 100 watt bulbs.

Is that 100 actual watts for each bulb, or are they "100 watt equivalent" bulbs which actually only draw about 25w?

Curtis N wrote in post #4428892
Is that 100 actual watts for each bulb, or are they "100 watt equivalent" bulbs which actually only draw about 25w?

100 Watt Equivalents

You say this is fluorscent, not tungsten, correct? The one thing I have found with fluorescent lights is the color shifts can be horribe. The sine waves will through in a lot of green and other colors at times. If you use a shutter speed over 1/100 you often have half an image with a harsh green hue.

Powering all those lights seems like it would be a pain.

Hi Brian,

Yes, these are compact fluorescent 5000K daylight bulbs. Now that I've tested the amount of light I'm going to do some some tests for color temperature and temperature shifts. That's what I was thinking would be the bigger issue than quantity of light.

I have read that the compact fluorescents use electronic ballasts that cycle at 25,000 hz which should take care of the color shift issues that normally plague fluorescent lighting.

Since you'll be shooting at 1/60 or slower, you'll catch a full cycle anyway.

I'm curious about something else....

What is the difference in terms of image quality when using a soft white bulb or a bright white bulb as opposed to using a daylight bulb. I realize they operate at different temperatures but if I can set custom white balance then does it really matter which bulbs I use?

I did see a lovely source for flourescent 800w bulbs. Horribly expensive though!

I've shot one set with studio quality fluorescent (someone's gotta come up with a moniker for that so we can stop spelling out the whole name...) so far, and have been very impressed. I don't know the actual wattage, as I didn't pay attention, but when I go tot hat studio I will look.

The coolest thing so far is that you really don't need any light modifiers to "soften" the lights. The are soft by nature of the way they are built!

Shooting commercials we used Kino Flo lights which are banks of flouro lights using special bulbs and they are fantastic, I've also put diffusion material in front of them and stacked two 4'/4bank units together with the diffusion and had it about 4 feet away from the actress and it was incredibly beautiful. Kino Flo's cost a bunch of money though. I'm hoping for something more cost effective but f4 at 1/60 with ISO 400 won't be enough for photographing people. Thanks Robert for that link.

For table top though it might work.

After all this research and spending two days at my local store in various workshops, I've gone from oh boy, to forget it to gotta have profoto or elinchrom to speedlights back to tota lights for table top and interior portraits with softboxes and right now I'm back where I started, looking at an Alien Bee package for table top and portrait and then outside stuff use something like the Vivitar speedlight on a stand with a softbox or just reflectors and silks.

This is tiring, but I really see the need for lighting gear. Fluro lights look to be out of the question.

My dream lists have varied for non battery operated stuff...okay this is my FANTASY LIST as well as some more simple setups I might be able to do.

1. Alien Bee 800
47" Octobox
2 sturdy stands
Lastolight 4'x6' white/silver reflector

2. 2 Alien Bee 800's
3 heavy stands
boom arm
47" foldable octobox
Grid for octobox
22" beauty dish
cloth diffuser for beauty dish
Set of 4 Grids
Lastolight 4'x6' white/silver reflector
silver or white umbrella

3. 2 Profoto ComPact Plus 600's
5' Octobox
White Beauty Dish with cloth diffuser
set of grids
4'x6' Lastolight silver/white reflector
white and silver umbrellas, probably the largest of each and one small shoot through.
boom arm
haven't figured out the stand grip kit but this is beginning to be a lot of stuff for me
to handle.

4. 2- Elinchron 600RX mono heads
Similar setup as the Profoto set but haven't figured it out yet.

5. 2 Elinchron D 600 heads and similar package (this would get me started with Elinchron so if I build on it I'm still using their accessories if I go to better heads. The D heads are like the Alien Bees in that I think the flash duration is only 1/300 sec which is a bother but doable I think. The RX is around 1/900 th sec.

Basically right now I'm leaning back toward either the Alien Bees setup or to get one Elinchrom or Profoto head, 5' Octobox and beauty dish with diffuser and use that as a starting point.

Need to study more, I'll get this figured out, it sometimes take time, I'm not as impulsive as when I was younger and it's taken me a year to put together a camera kit I really am thrilled with and get everything calibrated and just so...

It's just that I come from a career where once we'd paid our dues (the first ten years) then we were able to use the best of gear for pretty much everything and you get used to that, especially when it's not coming out of your pocket.

Lighting was my passion so now I want to continue that as both a hobby and a part time profession. But I have to be able to afford it and intend for it to pay for itself.