DIGITAL LIGHTING

[Geolux]

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September 13, 2016

 

 

Does anyone have experience using LED bulbs as the light source for digital color photography?   Any suggestions?    Names of manufacturers of suitable LED bulbs?  General considerations?   What size bulbs should be used?   How should the white balance be handled?    The camera would be the M-240.    I have a big project with many hundreds of objects to photograph under a standard set of conditions.   I do not want to use flash.   I do not want to use ordinary incandescent bulbs because of the heat generated in a confined area.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

        Geolux

[Luke_Miller]

No personal experience, but Kirk Tuck a pro in Austin Texas is a big user of LED lighting and writes about it on his blog.  Here is a link to one of his posts:

 

https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2011/01/led-lighting-im-finally-getting-handle.html

 

A lot of good additional info in the comments.  If you do a search for "LED Lighting" on his blog you will find quite a few other posts.

Edited September 14, 2016 by Luke_Miller

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[tobey bilek]

LED come in daylight balanced variety.  You will not want them in your home probably,  but for photography should be OK.  Do a custom WB.  I would bounce them into an umbrella or through a diffuser.  Check Home Depot.

 

Should you want to spend lots of money,  there are multitudes of pro LED set ups made, usually for video lighting.  

[Peter H]

I don't have a great deal of experience, but I think it's worth noting that the output from constant light sources such as LED lights tends to be much lower than you might be accustomed to if you're familiar with strobes, so that diffusion and bounce techniques have to be revised, and the distances, and therefore the angles, between lights and subject also tend to be quite different, for the same reason.

 

The great advantage of LEDs is that you can see exactly what you're getting the whole time, making experimentation easier and more fun, for me anyway!

 

You might want to choose variable temperature lights too, in case you're working with mixed lighting and don't want to start messing about with gels.

 

It sounds like maybe up to three small photo-specific LED lights would be perfect for the work you describe. Decent photo lights are important, rather than torches or garage lights for example, especially for the sort of work you're talking about, because once set up, they will maintain a consistent temperature and output where work lights tend to waver a lot.

 

PS- some cheap sets are battery powered only, and if you have hundreds of shots to make you'll want mains power since the batteries don't last long. Any large photo supplier will have a range for you to inspect. On-line is a good place to start.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Peter H