Photo Lighting

[Tom Bucanan]

I am totally confused with the photo tent lighting. What am I looking for in a light? I have a lot of different kinds of lights already (flood lights, halogen, ...) What kind of wattage do you want? What is up with lumens? (Do I want the highest lumen rating (I have up to 1300 lumens))

[Steve Schlumpf]

Tom - I'm not an expert with this stuff but I can tell you what I do. I use cheap clamp on reflectors with compact daylight florescent bulbs that are no more than 40 watts. Big thing to pay attention to is the 'K' rating, which is the Kelvin of a bulb and is measured in temperature. Easiest way to think of this is - at a rating of 5200*K everything looks natural, above that K number and things tend to move towards a blue tint, below that number and everything moves towards yellow.

Lumens - I think of this as a measurement of light saturation. The higher the number - the brighter the light.

[Tom Bucanan]

Thanks for your response Steve. Where would I find the 'K rating' for the bulb? I am looking on the packaging and there only seems to be Wattage and Luminosity.... Why do you use no more than 40 W?
Also, I see that you have a gradient in the background of many of your bowls. How do you do that? Is that the backdrop or is it done with the camera?

[Steve Schlumpf]

Tom - the 'K' rating should be on the bulb base and/or the packaging. The bulbs I use were picked up at the local home improvement store (Menards) and are the cheapest Daylight (full sprectrum) bulbs they had. The 40 watt bulbs I use are the equivalent to 100 watt incandescent bulbs as far as color and luminosity. The big thing to remember is you want full spectrum bulbs so that your photos will have true to life color. Any variations and you will have to adjust the colors in your photos through software.

There are a number of places on-line that offer different styles of backdrops. I use the #39 backdrop listed on this page: http://www.phototechinc.com/graduate.htm