A Curiosity - Which Hopefully Does Not Kill

[spilot]

Hi All & greetings to seniors,

It crossed my mind that I have read somewhere - in one of those rediculously priced photo mags - that one can effectively substitute studio phot0flood heads with a 300-500w garden floodlamp. Is this possible ?

If it is, I found a hardware store that sells these high wattage floods at S$39.00. Not a bad idea, but I know they're gonna be hot as hell.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Regards,

CJ

 

[Darren]

Technically yes. If you team it with a dimmer/regulator, can even make the light output variable.

Have used various table lamps and fluorescent lights to take small objects before - but in the past, color balance was an issue (when using negs/slides), now, with digital, just take a grey card reading and set the proper white balance.

 

[roygoh]

If you want to use a faster shutter speed or smaller aperture, you will end up turning up the brightness, and then it gets very hot and tiring for both the model and the photographer's eyes.

If you turn down the brightness, you will need bigger aperture and/or slower shutter speed, meaning possibly lack of DOF or getting motion blurr.

I would not recommend it for model shots. Still life would be OK.

The good thing is that your camera metering works in this situation, thus you do not need a flash meter.