Continous lighting for product shots

I find for archaeological finds a big window/door/shady spot outside, a solid tripod and some homemade reflectors works very well. Who cares if you are using a 4 sec exposure? The only issue is how urgently you need the photos. Getting enough light mid-winter can be a problem I spent a few weeks in Italy in 1984 photographing finds using tungsten lights and the biggest problem was the sweat pouring off me dripping on the background paper and pooling in the viewfinder. Yuck!

Try this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=33...

G

Looks Brilliant and very cheap.

shim

and totally uncontrollable

In what way would you find them totally uncontrollable? Surely a continuous light source (the sun is one as well) would be the most easy to control of all?

Totally uncontollable in the sense that this is just a flood with no means of controlling spill. There is no mention if the tubes are continuous spectrum and at the price I doubt if they are. Dont we try to control the sun with scrims, diffusers, reflectors and so on?

Ken

How about this one? link

Here is the rub:

"The 70cm x 50cm softbox produces the equivalent of over 700 watts of tungsten lighting. This means that there is enough light, at a distance of 1 metre and with 800 ISO, to give a typical full power exposure of 1/30th second at f/13 (or 1/400th at f/4), and a typical minimum power exposure of 1/30th second at f/4."

Note, 800ISO and the lamp is only 1 metre from the subject matter. For product photography you would want the lowest ISO available so we would now have an exposure of 1/30 at f4 and not much DOF. Start moving the lamp to a more realistic distance to the subject and you'll be struggling to get anything at all out of it. This is a very low output lamp.

If you want cold continuous lighting with accurate colour balance there is only one choice IMO link

Ken