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Take great product photos using an easy-to-build, inexpensive array of fluorescent lights.
I got very tired of the expense, heat and danger of using color-corrected photo flood bulbs for my photos. Every 8 hours (usually less) of usage the bulb would die. Using two 500 watt photo floods heated me and the room to sweltering suffocation in just a few minutes. Then a cloth backdrop I was using came in contact with one of the bulbs and instantly burst into flame. There had to be a better way...
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I began experimenting with different light sources and the white balance and other preprogrammed color balance functions in my camera. The best solution turned out to be the very last one I would have imagined -- fluorescent lights! Before doing this I would have said it was impossible. To make this light source work for you it is necessary to have a quality camera with excellent color balancing capabilities. You may want to read my guide Lighting with fluorescent lamps for great auction pics.
My Highly Sophisticated and extremely high-tech Lighting System solution (sarcasm intentional).
After experimenting with fluorescents I decided to use some old shop fixtures I already had stored in my nice, humid, rust-inducing basement. I crudely ganged them together and hung them from what ever was handy. First I'll show you how I put them together, how they look completed and all that I will do differently when this type of fluorescent is obsolete and I have to rebuild my "system."I first took two sets of three light fixtures and bolted them together using a piece of strap iron.
This is the back side, left: As you can see that these lights are old, very cheap, shop lights...
Left side and right side units.
Together:
Next time around:This is the back side, left: As you can see that these lights are old, very cheap, shop lights...
Left side and right side units.
Together:
The left lights are "hung" on an old camera tripod; the right on two light tripods with an improvised cross connection of Larson Strobosol reflector camera mounts. The right bank is about 18" lower than the left but I don't know that that would make a difference. It is also slightly farther away from the center of the table which lets the shadows on the right side be a little darker that the mid-tones on the left side of an object.
Between the lights is a background cloth thumb-tacked to the wall - easy to change to white, cream or other color but hard on the wall. Note the two holes in the cloth to the left. That is a large sheet of black cloth hung on a frame with holes slit down the center of the cloth. I use it for taking pictures of glass covered prints. The large area of black doesn't reflect any of the surroundings in the glass with only the lens of the camera protruding through the slit. I was using 500 watt blue (white balanced) photo floods which are short-lived, expensive and VERY hot. The background fell against the bare bulb which instantly melted the synthetic cloth and set it on fire. Both the cloth and the melted cloth were on fire. The burning cloth was dripping in little flames off the hot bulb onto the carpet, smoking horribly and instantly setting off two piercingly loud smoke alarms. That was the end of my using photo flood bulbs!
Between the lights is a background cloth thumb-tacked to the wall - easy to change to white, cream or other color but hard on the wall. Note the two holes in the cloth to the left. That is a large sheet of black cloth hung on a frame with holes slit down the center of the cloth. I use it for taking pictures of glass covered prints. The large area of black doesn't reflect any of the surroundings in the glass with only the lens of the camera protruding through the slit. I was using 500 watt blue (white balanced) photo floods which are short-lived, expensive and VERY hot. The background fell against the bare bulb which instantly melted the synthetic cloth and set it on fire. Both the cloth and the melted cloth were on fire. The burning cloth was dripping in little flames off the hot bulb onto the carpet, smoking horribly and instantly setting off two piercingly loud smoke alarms. That was the end of my using photo flood bulbs!
Two lengths of strapping, 6 washers, 6 self-taping screws and a length of coat hanger wire complete my professional, very high-tech, and super-sophisticated lighting system. Aren't you impressed with the extremely high quality and terribly expensive parts I used in its construction? OK, it's not pretty but it sure does work great.
Left lights on - right lights on. It's hard to see in this picture but all the bulbs on the are different brands. The next to last one is a "daylight" fluorescent lamp but the camera still interprets all of them as being made of white light. Right side - same brand of bulb.
But here's what happens if you don't give the camera enough time to adjust itself...
This is an unretouched photo. I shot so fast that the camera didn't even have enough time to correctly adjust the exposure or the white balance. As you can plainly see the bulbs on the left are very different from each other in color temperature. With my camera, when I slightly depress the release to find the focus point and continue to hold it partially depressed, it cycles through different colors from yellow to blue to white "looking" for the correct balance. If I continue doing that it will often cycle through the colors again.
I have the Photoshop software and love it but seldom use it for anything on eBay. As I said in my guide to white balance and fluorescent lighting, I've found that Microsoft Office Picture Manager has all I usually need. I still tweak most of my photos. Most of them are too flat for my taste and there's enough variation in the exposure (I let the camera determine the exposure) that I want to lighten or darken almost all of my shots. This is especially true depending on how much area of a white or black background shows. Also in the Picture Manager there is an Enhance Color button which brings up a target cursor. In the pic of the back of the lights I put the cursor over the reflection on the far left light, clicked on it, and brightened the pic a little. Here are before and after pictures. The color balance isn't perfect, by a long shot, but it sure is improved.
I have the Photoshop software and love it but seldom use it for anything on eBay. As I said in my guide to white balance and fluorescent lighting, I've found that Microsoft Office Picture Manager has all I usually need. I still tweak most of my photos. Most of them are too flat for my taste and there's enough variation in the exposure (I let the camera determine the exposure) that I want to lighten or darken almost all of my shots. This is especially true depending on how much area of a white or black background shows. Also in the Picture Manager there is an Enhance Color button which brings up a target cursor. In the pic of the back of the lights I put the cursor over the reflection on the far left light, clicked on it, and brightened the pic a little. Here are before and after pictures. The color balance isn't perfect, by a long shot, but it sure is improved.
All of the pictures of the unlit lights were taken with overhead fluorescent lights. I hadn't balanced that light source and the camera over-compensated for the excess green shifting the white balance to magenta.
1) I'll use 6-8 bulbs on each side
2) all the fixtures will be enclosed in a (ventilated) wooden box
3) the front of the box will be covered with a sheet of white plexiglass (to diffuse and scatter the light more)
4) over that will be a sheet of the lenticular textured plastic that covers some fluorescent fixtures (this to spread the light even more)
5) each box will be mounted on a large base frame (for stability) holding 4 casters in each of the corners (for mobility)
Thanks for reading my guide on building and using an array of florescent lights for your eBay photos. Please spare a couple of seconds to click the YES link at the end of this page if you found this review interesting, useful, or informative. NOTE: You must be signed into your eBay account with your user ID or your vote will not be counted. Your YES vote really does make me feel that all my effort is worthwhile in writing these guides.
Guide created: 11/25/07 (updated 10/31/09)
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