Continous lighting for product shots

Hopefully you can give me some advice.

We are looking at buying a continuous lighting studio kit to allow us to take our own shots of our products for our literature and website. We sell engines and components into the automotive and industrial markets.

Since my fellow directors have seen the results of my K20D they are all convinced we can save a packet if we set up to DIY.:

Now, I am assuming that continuous lighting with softboxes is the thing for this but I do not know what difference the power outputs of the lights makes and wondered if anyone could enlighten me? Sorry about he pun, just couldn't resist!

Best regards,
Andy

You can try here>>>link

Why continuous lighting? Would a modest 2 head flash kit not be more economical?

As regards saving money though, will any saving be worth it considering how much of your time it will take up. What about your Director function - do you want to become a photographer for the company instead?

:

I've worked with continuous lighting set-ups before and, while it can be cheap to buy into initially, it does give off a *lot* of heat after comparatively short spells of time. If you're working in less than perfectly ventilated conditions this can become very uncomfortable very quickly.

I'd probably go with a small studio flash kit personally, not a lot more money but much better for your health!

I have a great deal of experience with continuous lighting and it probably isn't what you want. Without knowing the size of the things you want to photograph it is hard to be precise but I would imagine that depth of field will be very important and the set up John suggests would be highly effective. Continuous lights be they fluorescent or tungsten cost a great deal more for a similar output.

paint a room white, or get a white tent. now use sunlight for the tent, or halogen worklights (indirect, or bounced)for the room.
add heavy tripod and hdr images or multiple exposures for longer exposures.
or multi-pop exposures with smaller strobes.

I would never recommend Tungsten/continuous lights to anyone. As people have said above, they get extremely hot in a short space of time. Although it worse for people having their portrait taken, it's also very bad for the photographer.

Continuous lighting is cheap, granted, but you can get a decent flash kit for just that little bit more and it's so much more reliable...plus no heat, even with the modelling lamps on.


Paul

This Interfit Mid Range kit>link is the one I have on order.

For photographing moving objects or in small spaces, I would have to agree... do not bother with continuous lights.

I am guessing that for engine parts,your ability to find larger spaces and ventilation may not be an issue. Engine parts usually do not mind a little bit of heat.

Pick up a couple of cheap shop/construction site lights. They are about as bright as continuous photography lights for 2% of the cost. (play with one set, if it doesn't work as you expect, it is not a big loss -- probably also a lot easier to return than photo equipment).

Remember, power output of the lights are not much of an issue. Simply keep the shutter open until the object is exposed properly. This is trivial for still objects. (e.g. try photographing a puppy at a 1 second exposure)
For that reason alone, I hardly see the value in spending that much on high powered strobes.

Yes, the objects are all static and mostly made of metal, I have a large area we can devote to this.

All those comments are really helpful thank you.

Once we get some shots taken I will try and post some.

Many thanks,
Andy

I have some old tungsten lighting, and believe me when I say it gets blooming warm, and not just in front of the lights, I keep telling myself I'll convert it to flash but it'd probably be cheaper to buy new

psst....k7....video.....
continuous light sources like led and cf may be more useful in the long run....

not that flash will ever be obsolete...

I upgraded the modelling lamps in my elinchroms strobes to 150 watt halogens so they'd do double duty with video....

fluorescent lamps doesn't get so hot as normal tungsten lamps right, isn't that a solution or am I wrong with that?

Don, you say led... do you've some examples?
I've led lights in my headlamp and those are very good, it's only a shame that the colour spectrum isn't really wide i believe. Don't know how that will effect the object colours.

There are continuous cold lights, but I think the flash kit will cost quite a bit less.

Fluorescent daylight balance system are very good now, and, for a newbie, can be a lot easier to use than strobe. With strobe, you need experience to "visualize" the shadows properly. With fluorescent, what you see is what you get. Where they fall short is when you have a "dish" with 3 or 5 fluorescent bundle together, since it is not a point source, the shadows are not as clearly define as a strobe. But, sometimes, it is an advantage. Whatever you choose, good luck with your venture.