For a while I've been looking for a continuous lighting setup I could use on children that wouldn't generate a lot of heat and wasn't as expensive as the Spiderlight that Westcott sells.
And I found it indirectly....
A good place to look for cheap stuff is Amazon.com now because eBay has gotten to where it's hard to find good deals on stuff. Doing a search for a brolly box (which is a softbox built on an umbrella frame, they are usually fairly cheap and very quick and easy to use.) brought me to a page for a place called Cowboy studio. They were selling 2 33inch brolly boxes for $26.. pretty good deal if you ask me.
And down lower on the page in the Customers who bought this also bought area I saw an adapter for Edison screw in bulbs.... You screw the adapter into one light socket and it has 4 more attached to it... and right beside it Anzo daylight balanced CFT bulbs and then one of those little flash slave holders with an umbrella mount!
Instant 4 bulb Spiderlight.... for $60.... cool and I got a pair of the brolly boxes as well. :)
You can get the bulbs at Home Depot or Lowes cheaper, but they aren't quite as powerful as the ones I got, but judging by the test I've done, the color of them is about the same.
The CFT's or Compact Florescent Tubes 5500K daylight balanced bulbs are a little blueish green. But otherwise, pretty close to white light.. have a look below.
I also checked the power output for grins and giggles at 10 foot from the source my sekonic L358 measured the exposure at ISO 200 and 1/60th of a second at...
f:1.4 and 0 tenths without the brolly box.
f:1.4 and 3 tenths with the brolly box.... the silver reflective surface on the back of the brolly gives you about 1/3rd a stop more light out the front.
If you will notice the shots with the brolly box are slightly brighter, about 1/3rd a stop than without. The silver lining of the box reflects back light that would otherwise be wasted.
