Photography by Andrew Rodgers

Cheap, Quick, & Portable

In this post I will cover a few things that you can re-purpose into great continuous lighting tools. These are things that anyone can do, there is no special talents required, and most of the components are very inexpensive. I will specify sources in the U.S., and I hope most of this stuff is available wherever in the world you’re viewing this from.

Brooder lamps

These are some of the most versatile, inexpensive, and usable items you can buy for your continuous kit, 4 of these with 100 watt equivalent CFLs is enough to make GREAT portraits. In the U.S. you can find these brooder lamps in Home Depot or Lowes. Their lightweight clamp design makes for easy mounting, just clamp and go. The aluminum reflectors can be a bit harsh alone, so I covered mine with a lightweight nylon “kitemaking” fabric. This drops the output slightly, but creates a beautiful, large emitter for the light, making incredibly soft shadows perfect for portraits. I sewed what resembled shower caps with the nylon and and elastic around the edge, making socks that I can just slip on when needed, however, a big rubberband is all that’s needed to secure the nylon on the dish.PVC pipe is a cheap support system, you can build a framework that can be broken down into modular components.

Halogen Worklamps

If you need a LOT of light, and don’t care about heat or color temperature, halogen worklamps provide lots and lots of light on the cheap. With most bulbs being 500W and >90% of that going to heat, these things do get hot, and should not be used around children, or anything else flammable! I was able to pick up locally at a discount hardware store a single 500W fixture with bulb for $10, that’s cheap! 500 Watt Halogen Work Light – Amazon.com The nice thing about this light is that it can be thrown for a pretty good distance, but it does radiate at a pretty wide angle. I used a light just like this, mounted to a ceiling for an ambient light at a concert. I used an amber gel to make it blend in with the rest of the accent lights, but still put a lot more light on the subject.

These are just a few of the readily available quick and dirty continuous lighting hacks, my next post will deal with putting together studio lighting equipment.