A bike photographer, Ray Dobbins, describes his simple, inexpensive set-up for taking clear photos with realistic color balance. His secret weapon is HALOGEN WORK LIGHTS. He uses 2, pointed at the ceiling, and apparently this sheds enough white ambient light all around to provide sharp, detailed pictures with relatively accurate color. Obviously I need some of these before I get so frustrated with all my yellow fluorescents that I launch them out the window.
The comments about this page on BoingBoing add some alternatives to the main set-up.
2 Comments
This is brilliant; thanks! We were especially having trouble finding adequate lighting, as our crappy little lamps aren’t cutting it at all. Tiem to take a trip to Sears.
Does your camera have white balance selection? I’ve always used warm fluorescent bulbs for my doll/figure photography, and just set my camera to tungsten white balance–not fluorescent WB, and definitely not letting it auto-balance–to cancel out the rampant yellow tones. Halogens are such super-hot (dangerously hot, even–remember when they had to start putting cages on halogen torchière lamps because so many people were setting their curtains on fire with them? Those bulbs were maybe 300 watts) energy hogs that I’d hesitate to use them in the small spaces where I’ve always done my figure photos.