A better light bulb for BJD photography

thank you for your tip and your review. i'm going ot get a couple for my set up once i get it together.

 

Nikita Thanks for this great idea. I am definitely going to try these lights if they are not as hot as regular incandescent lights. What brand of camera do you use that has a white balance setting for Fluorescent H? I still haven't decided on which DSLR to buy and I want to make sure I get one with this choice on it.

 

I really have to call the hotel we stayed at for a recent convention. They had fluorescent bulbs in all the lamps in the room. You know the light is never strong in a room, and I figured I'd have to do lots of color shifting, but we were all surprised at how natural the light looked in pictures. A little on the cool side, like your first pictures, but definitely acceptable!

OTOH, the daylight-balanced screw-in fluorescent bulb by OTT, that they sell in craft stores for "natural daylight light" isn't. It has a slight bit of bluish/greenish cast to it and needs to be compensated for with an additional light source.

 

A lot of businesses bit the bullet and coughed up for CFs when they came out, because if you replace all the bulbs, even in your house, you see a significant drop in your power bill.

Unless, of course, you rarely use lights in your abode :-)

But calculate the wattage difference, and multiply by the number of incandescents in your place, and you might feel the necessity to invest! lol!

 

Oohhh...*looks for CFL* gonna try this one...Thank you for the info!

 

Thanks for tips on the bulbs, really want to set up a better place to do pics.

 

Thank you for the good tip

 

thank you for sharing these informations !

 

As an update to this, some research has been finding that CFL bulbs suffer from "UV leakage" (they work by converting UV light to visible light). There are now more affordable LED options, though, that can be purchased in a Daylight temperature range.

I'm currently using a pair of LEDs for photos, though I still have a CFL in my workstation; I'm waiting on swapping it out until I can get a bulb that works directly with my hub, so I can have a dimmable bulb to use in photography (I'll swap out one of the standard bulbs).

 

Thank you or the update. I hope to get a small photo station set up again soon.

 

I recently bought a lamp with the hopes of using it for photography but I wasn't 100% sure what to go with bulb-wise, so this is super useful, thank you ^^

 

Did anyone happen to try out the new LED light bulbs? Looks like CFL bulbs are starting to get replaced by the LED ones. I know a major priority to look for is the number of lumens (light output) but I don't want to invest in expensive LED bulbs without more information.

 

I've been using a $12 daylight LED bulb for doll photos for a few years, and even though my setup is far from professional I think it works great as a primary light source. I think the one I have is 60 watt equivalent? (I swear it had the number of lumens listed on the package but I can't remember now...) It's very bright, and depending on whether I'm using another light source or not the daylight (5200K) or cloudy (6000K) settings on my camera capture colors perfectly. Sometimes there's a very faint blue tint, but most of the time I don't need to color correct at all.

The background for this photo is kinda terrible, but my lighting setup was just the one LED bulb in a clamp lamp a few feet away and late afternoon light from a window as the fill, and all I did in post was levels and exposure adjustment:

 

@Eucyon That's great news! And your photo looks great without editing. I just read an article on Forbes about LED replacing CFL due to Mercury, so it looks like I will be buying some LED's for my clamp lights too. Espc now that they will be made more affordable.

 

Useful article . Thank you! I often suffer from bulb choice .