2004
Being on a (very) limited budget, I've started exploring alternates to the standard lighting offered by camera stores. I'm talking about trying to find a decent light for less than $25.00. My first thought was to look into standard floods, anything rated 100 watts or above. Then after browsing lowes.com, I found that one could purchase a 500 watt halogen work light for about $10.00.
So my experimentation will begin with this lamp. The first questions to be answered are: what spectrum of light does it put out, and how much. I'm hoping that by shooting digital, I can set the white balance to get pleasing results. Even shooting with color negative shouldn't be too bad if the light spectrum is close to what tungsten puts out.
Update from 2008
Having never followed through with the plans to purchase a halogen light, and having read that the heat they put out makes them hard to work with. I waited until I could get a Wein Peanut Slave to use an old Vivitar 283 as an off-camera strobe. It was worth the wait. The peanut I bought is the "digital" version, which means it is set to work with the pre-flash that most modern cameras use to set their own flash output.
I set the D40 to Manual mode and use a shutter speed of 1/250. I adjust the aperture to match the subject and flash output. I've found that wrapping a piece white card-stock around the on-board flash keeps it from directly affecting the subject, but still triggers the slave. Using it I've been able to experiment with side lighting and other effects.
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