# Light Bulbs



## Rockytime

It has been recommended on this site that LED lighting would work for pen photos. I only have a Galaxy Note 3 to take photos. What particular LEDs would work for photos? I have reflectors that will accept standard or Edison bases. Do the LEDs come in different temp ranges. Just what should I use? All advice is appreciated. Thanks.


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## wyone

Home Depot does stock some screw in lamps in different colors in some of their stores.  I know the one I go to at Park Meadows did last time I looked.  I am not sure what color would be best for photography though.  They used to have a display that showed the different colors using flourescent, so thinking you could apply that as well.


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## Sabaharr

Bulbman.com     Photo floods. Have used them for 30 years as a pro photographer. They are 6 or 7 dollars a bulb and don't leave them on while not in use. Life is only about 6 hours of actual burn time.


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## farmer

*LED*



Rockytime said:


> It has been recommended on this site that LED lighting would work for pen photos. I only have a Galaxy Note 3 to take photos. What particular LEDs would work for photos? I have reflectors that will accept standard or Edison bases. Do the LEDs come in different temp ranges. Just what should I use? All advice is appreciated. Thanks.


 

The only reason I suggest LED lighting is because LED lighting doesn't emit electromagnetic polarized waves until it is defused or softened ( scattered )..
And the fact that Florescent is soft lighting and some of the bulbs puts off a blue color spectrum.

My ( untested ) theory is one or two LED Flash lights with tissue paper rubber banned over light to soften the light  will do the trick.

If the light is to bright put more tissue paper on, or send me your address and I will send you a small piece of linear polarized film to put on top of the tissue paper or just remove the paper and just use the film to defuse the light.

A LED desk lamp should do the job to and they are dimmable, I would try to buy one that had the most watts.

Can you mount your Galaxy thing on a tripod ?


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## farmer

*LED*



Sabaharr said:


> Bulbman.com     Photo floods. Have used them for 30 years as a pro photographer. They are 6 or 7 dollars a bulb and don't leave them on while not in use. Life is only about 6 hours of actual burn time.


 
Can I ask what you normally use the LED lighting for .
I have seen it used in professional photo graphing cars, the LED panel must have been 10ft x 20ft and a overhead crane in the building positioned the panel.
The building was designed just to photograph cars .


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## Sabaharr

Photo floods are not LED, they are regular screw in incandescent bulbs that emit daylight balanced light. Regular bulbs tend to put off a reddish tint light and fluorescent bulbs put off a greenish blue tint. Our eyes correct for it and some cameras do now but some don't. Photo floods mimic sunlight and show through with natural color. And they get really hot so best not to leave them burning.


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## moke

Light has color to it...it is measured in Kevin temperture.  Daylight is 5500 Degrees Kelvin.....most incandesent bulbs are 2500 to 3200.  That number is posted on most better bulbs.  While I am not familar with a Galaxy Note, my iphone has some adjustment available to allow for the yellow light that incandesent bulbs give off.  Most LED light are at the higher spectrum of Kelvin ( 5500 to 6500 )  You should be ok with them...


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## Sylvanite

farmer said:


> The only reason I suggest LED lighting is because LED lighting doesn't emit electromagnetic polarized waves until it is defused or softened ( scattered ).


Ordinary lights, including incandescent bulbs, CFL bulbs, and LED bulbs (and the sun) all emit unpolarized light.  Diffusers, by their very nature, generally depolarize light.

I invite you again to visit http://www.penturners.org/forum/f24/polarization-glare-133334/ for detailed discussion of the causes and effects of polarization, and the cause and cures for glare.

Back on the original topic, however, daylight balanced (5500K) compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs are readily available from many photo supply houses.  Daylight balanced LED lights are also becoming popular for videography and product photography.  Either type is suitable for pen photography.  Both are nice because they don't get very hot.  Regular incandescent, quartz lights and other 3200K lights (including LED) can be used if your camera supports "tungsten" color balance, or if you use an appropriate filter, or if you correct the white balance in post-processing.

Just about any regular light source can be made to work effectively provided all lights used are the same type (i.e. color).  You simply need to take a custom white balance reading. 

I hope that helps,
Eric


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## Charlie69

walmart sells 5000k CFL for $5.69 a 4 pack.


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## Rockytime

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will go shopping for for LED lamps. I do have polarizing filters from back when I was into photography. Perhaps I can hold them in front of my cell phone. I do have a great cell phone holder on my tripod. I just have to get the proper lamps. So thanks everyone.


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## magpens

Artificial lighting is rated for color temperature ... you want that to be over 5000 K.

Compact fluorescent bulbs usually have the color temperature marked on the base.

Fluorescent tubes don't usually have that marking, but are marked "soft white", "daylight", etc.  Use the "daylight" ones which have a color temperature close to sunlight.

LEDs are not marked, as far as I know, but typically emit light with a color temperature close to "daylight", so they should be OK.  However, with LEDs, intensity is the problem ... you need lots of LEDs to get enough intensity, hence the large panel of LEDs for photographing cars.

I would be interested to know if several CREE type LED flashlights would provide enough intensity to photograph pens.


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## Ironwood

I have recently changed the lights in my lightbox to these LEDs (cool white 5000k ), I have 5 of them lighting my pen. 
I haven't had much chance yet to really use them much, I just hastily put some diffusers over the lights to test how they work for some test photos.
I think they show promise and with a bit of work I should be able to get better results yet.
13Watt Samsung LED Down Light KIT Dimmable Cool Warm White Frame 12 Volt | eBay

Here is a test image using these lights.


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## Skie_M

That looks very very nice .... that's the kind of results I'm going for with my little lightbox.


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## Ironwood

Skie_M said:


> That looks very very nice .... that's the kind of results I'm going for with my little lightbox.


 
Thanks. 
There is a bit of trial and error involved to get the lights positioned just right, and also getting the light diffused and spread across your scene to get rid of shadows and unwanted highlights which show as blownout sections on your pen.

I changed to LEDs because my old lights got too hot and would melt my diffusers if I wasn't careful. The old lights worked well and were cheap, but just got too hot for my liking.


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## PenPal

Recently I found as the large fluro curled bulbs I have been using for some time have aged I bought a worklight LED on tripod with two led fittings fairly shallow in thickness quite bright I rewired one branch that went to the 2nd light and put a 3 pin socket on it and fitted a new lead to the other one. The second light I fitted to a tripod. I will look for a pic of my open box set up.

Now these lamps are rated at 6500 kelvin but I find they gave a green cast , within my camera there are several white balance corrections have found difficulty so far correcting this within the camera. My solution will be to set the white balance on Auto again and expose to a true white surface up fairly close about half an arms length away.

THe led lamps like fluros give a light that seems to cycle a lot anyway when I get time I will report back on my findings so far 15 hrs of.

Food for thought.


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## PenPal

My light set up.

Peter.


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## farmer

*White balance*



PenPal said:


> Recently I found as the large fluro curled bulbs I have been using for some time have aged I bought a worklight LED on tripod with two led fittings fairly shallow in thickness quite bright I rewired one branch that went to the 2nd light and put a 3 pin socket on it and fitted a new lead to the other one. The second light I fitted to a tripod. I will look for a pic of my open box set up.
> 
> Now these lamps are rated at 6500 kelvin but I find they gave a green cast , within my camera there are several white balance corrections have found difficulty so far correcting this within the camera. My solution will be to set the white balance on Auto again and expose to a true white surface up fairly close about half an arms length away.
> 
> THe led lamps like fluros give a light that seems to cycle a lot anyway when I get time I will report back on my findings so far 15 hrs of.
> 
> Food for thought.


 
You can buy a 18 percent gray card  then learn how to set a custom white
 balance.
A *gray card* is an object of neutral color which                        reflects a certain amount of light. It is used                        to solve two color related problems in photography.                        One problem is a so called *color cast* (~ hue tint) in                        images caused by different illumination conditions                        and the cameras (in)ability to neutralize it. The                        other problem is the lack of a reference point for                        managing *exposure time* (amount of light captured),                        to prevent an image turn out too dark or light.       
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_card
Adorama Gray Card Exposure Aid, Pack Of(3) MQDGC  < gray card <
Video on how to set a custom white balance 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qug8HKf2NZM


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