I'm about 90% happy with it, I need to control reflections a little bit more and then it's just about perfect(although it is small). My next project will be a fullsize studio for portraits, I'm not expecting that one to be less then $100 though...

First, results:







Heres the setup:

... scratch that I don't have the setup pics online yet, you'll have to bear with me a few days.

Components:

3 - $7.50 home depot work lamps.
4 yrds - premium cotton (I think?) @ $3 a yard (for background)
3 yrds - low quality cotton @ $2 a yard (for diffusion)
3x3 framework out of 1/2" PVC - $10

optional - 36x30 sheet of 1/8" plexiglass - $16 I think I might buy another sheet and double to match a 1/4"

Nice, dude. While I rarely do those types of shots, I've definitely played with doing set-up/studio type shots and failed miserably. Cheap is always good too.

- Scott

Nice setup.
Where do you ski?

Rich, I got the fabric from JoAnn's.

Jacobsen, I ski 75% of the time at Crystal Mt., then 24% of the time at Mt. Baker.

This is before I added the plexiglass, also the lights are in different places(moved further back) and the backlight was flipped around(faces the wall) and I shoot with a flash. The flash is usually directed straight up. Don't pay attention to the leaf pattern... haha.

Interesting, Ive always wanted to try something like that..

Originally Posted by Damon

I ski 75% of the time at Crystal Mt., then 24% of the time at Mt. Baker.

And the last 1% of the time?



Any WB problems with mixing of the incandescent/flash light sources?

That 1%? Divided up between Whistler, Sun Peaks, Alta, Snowbird, Big Sky, and maybe some other places in Washington.

No W/B issues with RAW, they were off slightly but nothing that couldn't be fixed. I also had the flash a few stops down, so it wasn't too intense.

Every once in a while I'll forget to turn off the overhead florescent while I have my incandescents on and I'll screw up a whole batch of photos. Wouldn't be a huge problem with RAW, but since I like to get through dozens of product images as quickly as possible I shoot jpg in the studio.

Originally Posted by gnach

I assume the acrylic panels were for the sides? Any reflection issues there?

usually they're for the bottom so you can intentionally get reflections.

i built the good old tissue paper-old box 'tent' for smaller objects...someone posted a link a few weeks ago, i'll find it and post it up.

yeah dude, PVC and sheets will work, but unless you have it around for free PVC is more difficult and expensive than you need to be. A cardboard box with holes cut in the sides works very well to and is easier and free. Then just get some posterboard for a seamless bottom. Sheets or tissuepaper work to diffuse the light, whichever you have around.

The size of the thing is really the biggest variable as to what you build it from. If you're shooting big things you PVC plans would work very well, but on a small scale the cardboard box will be easier to deal with.

Good luck, and be sure to post pics of it and using it.

They dont appear to have it any more, but I picked up a 32(3) collapsible photo tent from Harbor Freight for under 15$ - works well for small objects.

I like your PVC framing and the shots you've pulled out of it.

they are just shop lights.

harborfreight is you friend for really cheap ones....!

http://search.harborfreight.com/cpis...ight&Submit=Go

Originally Posted by jm2e

Cheers! Diggin' the $25 LED shop light.

yeah, I kind of want one of those for around the house and general use, will lower my consumption for power when I light up the back yard during the summer for parties and such. Plus no more people getting burned from getting drunk and touching the lights.....

I have a calmut small product shoot through box that I use at times. It's rather nice and all but it was a little costly.

That reminds me, I need some mini stands to house some lights.

Originally Posted by jm2e

Cheers! Diggin' the $25 LED shop light.

wow, yeah, that's very interesting in deed... That could mean I could use my shop light setup WITH normal modifiers w/o risking a fire......

but yeah, GO TO HD or Lowes and check their shop lights. They'll have some cheapers ones, maybe not <$10, but they'll have some for less than $50 for sure. If you have a local harbor freight, I'd go there first though as I've never had an issue with their stuff and for the money it's killer.

The only thing that concerns me about the LEDs is that they are only 270 lumens, which is not very much at all.

^ what are the lumens of a 500w halogen shop light? And Geoff, when you say color rendition, can you elaborate that a bit? Are they consistent? If so I wouldn't see a problem, but if they're all different colors it could be a big issue. They make me curious for sure.

I'm not sure on the lumen of the 500w ers'''. I just did some searching and turned no results of usable value.

I'm sure they are way up there though.

I know the lumens on most Fluorescents are pretty low which is one of the reason you have to get much higher wattage to get the faster flashes which translates into much higher wattage. I just can't see a 4.5w panel putting out enough lumen to give the lighting needed for photography.

Originally Posted by Kilonad

The current crop of LEDs have a CRI (color rendering index) of about 70 (out of 100). That's not even good enough for retail display applications, let alone photography. http://www.lightingdesignlab.com/art...cri/cribig.htm

what's that mean though? If it's got a weird cast to it that would be annoying for retail, that's nothing a CWB can't fix no?

Originally Posted by Kilonad

Typical lumen ratings:
http://www.efi.org/factoids/lumens.html

270 lumens puts in the range of a 25W incandescent bulb, which sounds about right, although I doubt it's even putting out 270 lumens in the first place. IIRC, my 3W LED headlamp only manages about 110-130 lumens, and that's from a reputable manufacturer (not the overstated 200-300 lumen claims you'll find on the cheap dealextreme stuff).

right, but does your 3W LED headlamp have TWENTY FIVE bulbs and use 110?

yeah yeah, LEDs suck as a light source, but they've come a long way and don't get hot. Using 110 is a massive advantage as is using 25 bulbs...

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

what's that mean though? If it's got a weird cast to it that would be annoying for retail, that's nothing a CWB can't fix no?

No. Remember my post on metamerism? It's kinda like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

right, but does your 3W LED headlamp have TWENTY FIVE bulbs and use 110?

yeah yeah, LEDs suck as a light source, but they've come a long way and don't get hot. Using 110 is a massive advantage as is using 25 bulbs...

There are NO LEDs that operate off of 110V. It's almost certainly got a transformer inside that steps it down to 3.5V, which is what most white LEDs run at. Even my 3W CREE runs at just 3.7V. You'll fry an LED if you put more than 5V across it.

While LEDs don't behave in quite the same way as incandescents, a single 100W bulb is over twice as bright as four 25W bulbs put together. I doubt that they're using really high efficiency LEDs, so it's not like 25 of these are going to be brighter than a single 4.5W high-efficiency LED.

Originally Posted by Kilonad

No. Remember my post on metamerism? It's kinda like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

the green gloves right? Yeah, thanks, that explains it.

There are NO LEDs that operate off of 110V.

you're forgetting one KEY aspect about 110 they Captain.... ()... 110 means you don't need to worry about battery life. Sure a lot of the better flashlights have high output modes that suck juice fast, but I'd bet NONE of those modes are FULL power of the LED or it'd kill the battery even quicker. 110 just means it's got unlimited power behind it so they don't have to throttle them back. I also doubt they're high power (especially in a harbor freight product) but I'm guessing it's got decent output.

Just think of it this way. What's the point of a shop light? If it can't throw out a significant amount of light (granted the color doesn't matter much for shop applications) it's worthless. The whole point of shop lights are to put so much light on a subject you can see all the imperfections very easily. So w/o the power to the light, a normal old incandescent could do the same thing, but shop lights exist because incandescents aren't powerful enough....

the reason LEDs would be very nice in a shop light is 2 fold (from my use). First off LED's don't break or burn out. I've gone through ~3 bulbs in my hologens here in my light booth in ~5 years. Not a lot but the ends usually shatter when they go (porcelain) so it's a PITA to clean up and get it out. Second is the heat, I've almost burned/melted quite a few things with mine when I'm not paying attention...

but if the color is an issue they won't work, but I'm still curious.

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

you're forgetting one KEY aspect about 110 they Captain.... ()... 110 means you don't need to worry about battery life. Sure a lot of the better flashlights have high output modes that suck juice fast, but I'd bet NONE of those modes are FULL power of the LED or it'd kill the battery even quicker. 110 just means it's got unlimited power behind it so they don't have to throttle them back. I also doubt they're high power (especially in a harbor freight product) but I'm guessing it's got decent output.

Just think of it this way. What's the point of a shop light? If it can't throw out a significant amount of light (granted the color doesn't matter much for shop applications) it's worthless. The whole point of shop lights are to put so much light on a subject you can see all the imperfections very easily. So w/o the power to the light, a normal old incandescent could do the same thing, but shop lights exist because incandescents aren't powerful enough....

the reason LEDs would be very nice in a shop light is 2 fold (from my use). First off LED's don't break or burn out. I've gone through ~3 bulbs in my hologens here in my light booth in ~5 years. Not a lot but the ends usually shatter when they go (porcelain) so it's a PITA to clean up and get it out. Second is the heat, I've almost burned/melted quite a few things with mine when I'm not paying attention...

but if the color is an issue they won't work, but I'm still curious.

Umm... no. My flashlight does utilize the LED to its fullest potential, on batteries, and it gets battery life in the tens of hours. It's got a turbo mode that'll go even brighter, but for a short amount of time so as not to overheat the LED and damage it (the batteries don't really care).

Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that even if this thing hits the supposed 270 lumens, it's still using blue LEDs. It's only equivalent to a 25W incandescent light bulb - which is dimmer than the bulbs in your fridge and oven! You'd need 40 of them to match a 500W halogen shop light! It's worthless!

Originally Posted by Kilonad

Umm... no. My flashlight does utilize the LED to its fullest potential, on batteries, and it gets battery life in the tens of hours. It's got a turbo mode that'll go even brighter, but for a short amount of time so as not to overheat the LED and damage it (the batteries don't really care).

it's heat and battery life. I'm guessing when they shrink these things both are a much bigger issue than when you can make something as big as a shop light.

Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned that even if this thing hits the supposed 270 lumens, it's still using blue LEDs. It's only equivalent to a 25W incandescent light bulb - which is dimmer than the bulbs in your fridge and oven! You'd need 40 of them to match a 500W halogen shop light! It's worthless!

I'd be willing to bet it's more powerful than a 25W incandescent, otherwise, like I said, NO ONE would buy it..... There is ZERO point to even making a 25w shoplight equivalent.

you really can't get past the 110 -vs- battery difference can you. Look, I've lived on a boat with LED lights. Single bulb units that are bright enough to light a room as a halogen did in their place. These run off 12v. So yeah, this should be brighter than your petzl dude. Less draw, less heat, similar light... I'm not saying it will be the same as a 500w shoplight, but I'm betting it's better than a 25w incandescent. And they're not betting on people like me because you can return things to harbor freight.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but just saying it's impossible to make a LED shoplight that works is a bit short sighted. Making it work for $25 maybe, but not making one that works. We have a LED masthead bulb on our boat that has a ~5 mile range I believe and significantly less draw than the incandescent it replaced?

Yeah, if an LED was anywhere nearly as powerful as a halogen, they would be selling 110 Socket bulbs by the truck load.
LEDs have a better V/lumen output, but the Voltage is still Low, so although they're great at battery and low power consumption, cranking them up to high output is hard. We had a TON of LEDs at EO that people used, and all of them were over driven by 50-75%, to get every last possible lumen out of them at the exchange of only getting 30-50K hours instead of 100-300K. And even then they strobed them to do that.
And just because someone makes something, has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with wether its better or even as good as what theyre marketing against. If its Cheaper and it Claims to be better, someone (well lots of someones) will buy it...
"There's a sucker born every minute"- P.T.
Edit - oh and that whole "It looks just as bright..." yea, eyes = Logarithmic response, sensors = linear response.
something that "looks" just as bright will more than likely be no where near as bright to a sensor.

Originally Posted by SlvrScoobie

Yeah, if an LED was anywhere nearly as powerful as a halogen, they would be selling 110 Socket bulbs by the truck load.

the boat is a 12v system though...
but yeah, the LED replacements are very nice on boats. Similar light, less draw, bluer/whiter (less yellow) and less heat (halogens have almost started fired before). But they're not cheap. Something like $50 per light I think?

and let me just reiterate this:

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

wow, yeah, that's very interesting in deed... That could mean I could use my shop light setup WITH normal modifiers w/o risking a fire......

an LED shoplight to me would be rad because 500w halogens get so hot they can be unsafe... So if it were to work, I'd be interested. But even at $25 (I'd need at least 2) they're cost prohibitive for me... The rest of this is just waaaaay too much BS when all I was getting at is a cooler setup would kick ass.

now that I have two softboxed and 2 SB24s I'm very close to going with strobes anyway. The issue there is modeling lights sure are handy and I don't want to have to bring them into work then have to take them home again (I have a permanent shoplight lightbooth here at work).

Originally Posted by Kilonad

They don't run off of 12V any more than your iPhone charges at 110V when you plug it into the wall. There are no bare LEDs on this planet that will survive an input greater than 5V. Those 12V LEDs have drivers which step down the voltage, or they put enough of them in series that each one gets the appropriate fraction of the line voltage.

wow, I wish I knew that. Or perhaps...... The halogen is less bright on a 12v system than it is on a 110 system. THAT'S why the voltage matters.

You would need to put about 45 of the 3W Crees in it before you'd start coming close to the brightness of a 500W halogen shop light.

so you know what LEDs cost in bulk in china these days? Impressive.
that said I don't doubt they're less powerful than are in a 1 or 3 bulb headlamp, and I never said otherwise.

Just because you can see the bulb from 5 miles away doesn't mean it's capable of illuminating things at that distance.

I never said it did.

Originally Posted by Kilonad

Unlike Halogens, LEDs can only run at one voltage (or over a very narrow range of about 1V).

my point behind mentioning the 12v is that a halogen on 12v is less bright than a halogen on 110v can be. The LED will be the same on either system, but the halogen's power source WILL make a difference.

How 'bout this. What experience do you have with LEDs IRL beyond your headlamp? I don't claim to be an expert, or know the most about it, but I HAVE used a 110 LED bulb before (it sucked) as well as LOTS of different LEDs on a 12v system where they replaced other bulbs... So I've played around with LEDs that aren't battery run enough to know they can work, they can replace existing lights, and they can also suck. And it's almost a rule (at least so far) that they're cost prohibitive regardless of the quality of the end product. But that corner will get turned eventually and we will see LEDs that don't cost $20+ that DO work sometime in the future...

^ newer CFLs warm up a TON faster now. Our oldest versions take a few minutes, our newest <15 seconds. We've replaced lights as they go here and are either done or never use the few incadecents we have left because I haven't replaced any in a long time...

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

^ newer CFLs warm up a TON faster now. Our oldest versions take a few minutes, our newest <15 seconds. We've replaced lights as they go here and are either done or never use the few incadecents we have left because I haven't replaced any in a long time...

The only incandescent that we still have in my house or even my brothers are for the lights that are on dimmers. Everything else is CFL. Whenever we get a light that starts to wear out we tend to move that one to the kitch as first thing in the morning you don't want a bright light in your face right away. So that one gets the slower bulbs. It's nice to have one that takes a couple minutes to get up to full power.

We have a few CFLs dimmed...