where do you get a good one of these?

Check a larger photography store. They might carry practical fixtures with a heavier duty clamp and reflector for photoflood bulbs... it's a standard medium base socket so you can screw in your daylight fluo bulb in also..
 
Depends on the type of light you want to get. If you're talking about soft light, then yes. If you're talking about using a PAR to light up a house across the street, a fluo can never be used for that. So if you're comparing softlight to softlight only, fluorescent is far more efficient.
 
I'm thinking it might work as a back and/or fill light for interviews. I already have a Kino-equivalent with 4 daylight bulbs.
 
powerdog said:
I think I could use a good quality clamp-on reflector for a daylight fluo bulb. I've bought something that looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00065UZC2/qid=1149947852/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-8970619-3930403?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=A3GWFGDE3FDRVJ&s=hi&v=glance&n=228013

at Home Depot, but it was a piece of garbage. John Jackman's lighting book shows a more compact one, black on the outside, that looks a lot better. Any clues what/where?
Click to expand...

Well I think this one has to win an award. I will probably get one myself. Looks like a really nice bulb holder / clamp combo.

What about this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/All-In-One-Studio-Light-Holder-FREE-5500K-DayLight-Blub_W0QQitemZ7628430831QQcategoryZ3860QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

and this reflector/bulb combo (maybe can get the reflector alone too):

http://cgi.ebay.com/85-Watt-Photo-Bulb-and-Large-Aluminum-Reflector-Combo_W0QQitemZ7625510580QQihZ017QQcategoryZ79008QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

together.
 
Hmmm... well, the first one doesn't look like it has a reflector, so there's no way to aim the light -- unless you use blackwrap or find a reflector that'll fit. The second one doesn't seem to have a clamp or any mounting hardware. With both, it's also hard to judge the quality...at least something from B&H can be returned.
 
SP has a lot of good choices... they have cheaper models with wooden handles (like a file uses... and actually I may be thinking of SV instead of SP... but whatever you'll see them) that also have heavy-duty reflector dishes... I'd say that's a good place to start.

I've been pondering this question for a while and actually, if you can do some fab on your own... stainless steel bowls, like you can get at WalMart... are heavy-duty, lightweight, and ready for a similar function... now if I can just get it to be practical, effective, and maybe not look like a mixing bowl... I'll be set.
 
We're in the infancy stages right now... so far I've just used thin blade jig saw (bosch)... but I've got a crazy amount of tools. Ideally, if I end up with a lot of faith in this idea... I'll use a shop press with a punch... I'd also like to use a press to create several "flats" inside of a larger bowl, like a carribbean drum... then punch the mounts... and then have a fixture like this that has several bulbs nearly converging from the outside towards the center... then have them in a switchable array. I've got a few goofball ideas I'm working on... I've been thinking a lot about ways to make the absolute cheapest light fixtures imaginable... when I go to any store I'm looking at shapes and construction the entire time. I think Miracom is thinking along the same lines... there are many fixtures that can be canniballized for a different purpose. I usually start my investigation in that department... to see if anything new is in stock that I haven't seen... and I keep that same mindset while looking at stuff for the rest of the house... like stainless canisters or vanity trashcans. Why anybody would buy something like the super-expensive scandles fixture is totally beyond me... all you really need to do is get as many tubes as packed as possible in an array.

Pretty soon I'll have something that I like that's dirt cheap... probably within 3 weeks or so... and once I get some of that going I'll return to my other lighting projects... because the more I play with these CFL bulbs the more impressed I am with the old lights. I was getting paranoid that all this CFL stuff was going to knock the floor out of the 55w Kino type lighting... but I don't think it will afterall... there's a difference in the light. CLF and Biax are two different approaches that can be considered two different tools or two different price-points... but no matter how you look at it they are different... and I think the extra cost of PL (biax) fixtures is still worth the results in most cases.

Gimme' a few weeks... but if you want to work parallel to me in the meantime then go to Target, WalMart, and maybe a restaurant supply house... and buy every size stainless steel bowl and cannister they have... then start bangin' 'em up... and you'll be in my world. I'll probably make a lot of trash before I'm done... but once I get something I like I'll post it.

The one thing I can't overcome is the cost of being able to position a fixture in any angle... at the low end it's a Manfrotto 2905... and that provides one axis only... then the second axis is provided by the locking stud. At the high end I have these double ball systems from RAM... they are really slick and tough as nails, but they're expensive... so we'll see where it goes.
 
MattinSTL said:
We're in the infancy stages right now... so far I've just used thin blade jig saw (bosch)... but I've got a crazy amount of tools. Ideally, if I end up with a lot of faith in this idea... I'll use a shop press with a punch... I'd also like to use a press to create several "flats" inside of a larger bowl, like a carribbean drum... then punch the mounts... and then have a fixture like this that has several bulbs nearly converging from the outside towards the center... then have them in a switchable array. I've got a few goofball ideas I'm working on... I've been thinking a lot about ways to make the absolute cheapest light fixtures imaginable... when I go to any store I'm looking at shapes and construction the entire time. I think Miracom is thinking along the same lines... there are many fixtures that can be canniballized for a different purpose. I usually start my investigation in that department... to see if anything new is in stock that I haven't seen... and I keep that same mindset while looking at stuff for the rest of the house... like stainless canisters or vanity trashcans. Why anybody would buy something like the super-expensive scandles fixture is totally beyond me... all you really need to do is get as many tubes as packed as possible in an array.

Pretty soon I'll have something that I like that's dirt cheap... probably within 3 weeks or so... and once I get some of that going I'll return to my other lighting projects... because the more I play with these CFL bulbs the more impressed I am with the old lights. I was getting paranoid that all this CFL stuff was going to knock the floor out of the 55w Kino type lighting... but I don't think it will afterall... there's a difference in the light. CLF and Biax are two different approaches that can be considered two different tools or two different price-points... but no matter how you look at it they are different... and I think the extra cost of PL (biax) fixtures is still worth the results in most cases.

Gimme' a few weeks... but if you want to work parallel to me in the meantime then go to Target, WalMart, and maybe a restaurant supply house... and buy every size stainless steel bowl and cannister they have... then start bangin' 'em up... and you'll be in my world. I'll probably make a lot of trash before I'm done... but once I get something I like I'll post it.

The one thing I can't overcome is the cost of being able to position a fixture in any angle... at the low end it's a Manfrotto 2905... and that provides one axis only... then the second axis is provided by the locking stud. At the high end I have these double ball systems from RAM... they are really slick and tough as nails, but they're expensive... so we'll see where it goes.
Click to expand...

Pretty much what i do.

When I go to home depot I am looking at things and how to use them differently than they were meant to be used. I also go to restaurant supplies and Bed Bath and Beyond sometimes too to see what can be repurposed to use for something else. I was just there yesterday looking for a better version of something (like a bain marie) for my 200w softbox fixture that I could mount a mogul base in.

When i made my first softbox fixture, I used a gallon paint can with a 6" baking pan attached to one end to be the softbox ring receptor and hold the sockets for the 7 42w bulbs. I put 4 ballasts and wiring inside the can. I ended up throwing it away though because it was just too hard to work on the innards when i needed to. A real birdsnest. A better design was to have the side open and have a door on it rather than having one end of the can open (where the lid is). You will have some throw-aways along the way and can't be afraid of a few failures when your making your own lites.

The 55w bulbs are definitely the best but I also like the triple twin tube 42 watt ones. I think the quality is as good as the 55's and the ballasts are a bit cheaper and easier to find great deals on I think.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top