Continuous lights

[vinny]

I wouldn't use quartz fixtures on softboxes made for strobes. You can get away with those cfl heads in the soft boxes for strobes.
Also, you get what you pay for. I've only used my cheapo soft box about 6 times in my house and it was fine. It failed on the 7th time which happened to be the only time i've used it on a paying gig. One of the rods poked through it's corner, rendering it useless.

fyi, strobes are daylight balanced. Most "hot lights" you can afford are tungsten balanced.
for a big soft box try a 2k blonde Ianbeam, this is tungsten balanced.
Dimming a tungsten filament causes the color temp to change drastically. Led's don't change color temp when dimmed but usually lack the punch required to shoot through a soft box. There's no such thing as cheap daylight balanced hot lights.

If you plan on using any smaller soft boxes and tungsten lights, fixtures like this:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-2-100...item1c49a00f8f
chinese version:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pro-Photo-Vi...item3a78446337

[Tin Can]

Still not sure why you want continuous for stills. But I bought Einstein strobes because they go very low output, 2.5ws. My friend also has a full set. We got light.

Here.

Also not sure why everybody seems to hate PCB gear. I started using White Lightnings 20 years ago and I always knew when I bought my own I would buy PCB. I am a sucker for US products. I also like his control system. The tiny transceiver controls 16 lights with a flash meter that exactly matches my Sekonic L-758DR. I stopped checking.

As I wrote in a PM, I have a few other things you may try out here or borrow.

[NickyLai]

I'm looking to get maybe a kit .....

This link looks like has a lot of kits to choose from.

I don't know them and haven't buy from them neither, but keep the link for future need of continuous lights. I got the link from BetterLight member forum.

Happy Shopping Season!
Nicky

[jnantz]

the comment about lowell is funny
i have used lowell lights ( tota, omni and L lights )
on and off since the 1980s and never had a problem

that said, i have wanted to sell all my lights ( lowel as well as monoblocks )
to get a smith victor kit, they are wonderful ... wish i had the $$ they aren't cheap.

[Bruce Watson]

I'm looking to get maybe a kit but definitely a big softbox (60") and light, however everywhere I look all I see are strobes. I don't want strobes, I want to buy continuous lights. Alien Bees had been recommended to me at some point, but they are only strobes, right?

Which brands make continuous lights/kits?

If you want softlights, the obvious choice is fluorescents (because they are already inherently soft lights and therefore ideal for softbox use). Either straight tubes with electronic ballasts designed for photography / video, or compact fluorescents (curly tubes). The big name for this kind of lighting is KinoFlo. Westcott is big into the compact fluorescent side.

You'll need bulbs that are color corrected, which KinoFlo has made for them. Done right this typically means six or seven phosphor tubes, which is really the only way to get the tubes CRI up toward 90+ which is where you'll need it for color photography work.

You could also use tungsten "hot lights" which are, in fact, hot. These draw a lot of power and convert a surprising amount of it to heat.

An alternative to tungsten lights are high intensity discharge (HID) lights. Osram trademarked the HMI version, but HMI has become this type of lighting's "kleenex", it's become the generic name for this type of lighting. HMI lights are what is used in football and basketball stadiums, and for much movie work in Hollywood. An 18kW HMI does an excellent imitation sun as it blasts through a window, but it takes a generator on a truck to run it. There are much smaller versions of course, the most common being 575W. But this is still a huge amount of light (HMIs are about the same efficiency as fluorescent, about 4x more light that the same wattage tungsten). At the really small end of HMI are the CDM lights.

The joy of the CDM lights is that they give you about the same lighting quality as the bigger HMI lights, but at a fraction of the cost. And... you can get fresnel lights, which means you can control how hard/soft your shadows are and how big a spot you throw. These things work great in a softbox (they don't really get hot), and they bounce really well too.

My favorites are the Cool Lights 150s, with a softbox for when you need it.

[DrTang]

Arri makes great hot lights

you can use a softbox designed for hotlights with strobes

just don't use a strobe only softbox with hotlights


you can still find old Berkeley Color-tran lights around - they were built to last and will be pretty cheap now

[macandal]

Still not sure why you want continuous for stills.

It's just a preference thing. I never got comfortable with strobes. Also, I shoot 4x5, film, b&w almost exclusively, so continuous works for me. Not saying I would never shoot color, but I'm mostly a b&w shooter.

[Tim Meisburger]

I'm going to San Francisco in January for a meeting and while I'm there hope to pick up some lights. I've got a budget of $600 and was thinking about trying to find some used Arri fresnels, but am not sure if I can use them here, as we have 220v electricity mains. Suggestions are welcome.

[Tim Meisburger]

Also, I see you can buy a 100w led and a controller for $25 bucks on eBay. Would it be possible to switch out the halogen on an Arri with that?

[Tin Can]

I'm going to San Francisco in January for a meeting and while I'm there hope to pick up some lights. I've got a budget of $600 and was thinking about trying to find some used Arri fresnels, but am not sure if I can use them here, as we have 220v electricity mains. Suggestions are welcome.

Talk to a local Thai electrician, as it may be possible to split your local 220 vac into 110 vac using half a circuit.

Don't do it yourself.