Direct lighting

was at a store i hate... ran across 10$ mini spot lights that run off either a 10 watt LED bulb or 60 watt edison light bulb.

Is that something decent enough for macro work and still life?

It depends on so many factors.
For macro, are you shooting objects that sit still? Anything that moves will be problematic unless you use flash. Keep in mind that you need a lot of light for macro due to lens extension and small apertures, so small lights will result in long exposures.
For still life, how big of an object(s) are we talking and how would you like to light it/them? Evidently getting nicely diffused lights with such small spot lights will be difficult and you'll end up with not much light to work with. Doesn't have to be a problem if long exposures are OK. The lights may work for making small highlights here and there.

So, it all depends. Maybe those lights are entirely suitable for what you're doing. Maybe they're totally inadequate. Who's to say?

The light source here was 2 60-watt bulbs. The camera was on a copy stand. This was just slightly less than 1:1 macro.



You can take still-life photos with any light source, provided you can keep everything from moving during the exposure (however long it is). For macro, the slightest movement in either the subject or the camera will blur the photo, so it's best to have the shortest possible exposure.

I have always liked playing with odd-ball lighting, moving things around until it looks right. This was lit with a single AAA battery penlight suspended on a string:


It is the 'structure' of the light that is important: diffuse or focused, shape of the beam, fall-off, distance from source to subject. The stranger the structure the fewer the number of situations where it will work.

For $10 it's hard to go wrong. If you don't like the light for macro work the light can always get installed under a kitchen cabinet...

My thought was more on the cost.. and that continous can be easier to meter for what i have seen.

when i say macro, i mean its immobile on a sheet of card..

still life i mean its staged like a good painting.. it wont ever move.

A few flex neck lamps from Ikea or Walmart with LED bulbs are an easy table top consumer sourced set-up, being easy to use with cardstock window modifiers, with and without screens, plastic watercolour papers, white reflectors and mat black light absorbers of card and fabric papers.

These are easy to position with 2x4" and smaller woodblocks wire armatures squeeze clamps, etc.

Lamp hoods, often snoot shaped can be made into actual, free form foil, plastic or paper snoots and a bit of black fabric can be draped over some cooler running, translucent light hoods to eliminate excess light pollution.

Colour scarfs for uneven, draped or light level modifications.

If you're using b&w film, great, but go slow modifying colour exposures and use daylight bulbs.

Cheers.

I understand this is a fairly old thread, but this is a topic I have been curious about lately. I'm sure many of us have some version of these knocking about.


They're relatively cheap, and you can try any number of wattage/color temp bulbs in them. The mounts however are crap.

For something somewhat small (possibly easy to store in a tote), what else are people using for still-life work? I've been watching a few of the small led heads, but I don't really want to invest in light stand, etc unless I was also going to segue into portraiture. (which could then mean a strobe or two and the snowball is now rolling)

Simple, reasonably portable, suitable for tabletop work.

Should I be looking at stuff like this?

I saw these and may purchase 1 or 2 at some point.