Hey /p/,
I have a side hustle/hobby where I sell stuff and I've come to the conclusion that attractive photography makes people buy your shit. I can usually produce some pretty attractive photos using lighting in my house, but that requires taking the pictures at specific times of day.
So now I'm looking for a small and inexpensive lighting setup that would allow me to have better control of my light source. Subject matter are pretty small items and will be 0-5 ft away. I shoot with a stock 14-42mm lens on my DSLR with a moderate amount of natural light from the sun.
I started looking at these 500 LED setups kind of arbitrarily and some seem to fit my price point. If anyone could point me in the right direction for what I should be looking at, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
>>2720918
the strobist is now your god.
>>2720920
Great resource. Thanks.
>>2720922
NP...aside from that, you're interested not in the Watts of a light source, but the watt-seconds of a light source. Continuous lights, even stupidly bright ones, are really dim compared to strobes.
You really want strobes. You can get a two strobe setup for around $200 (avoid speed lights if you're just working out of a home studio -- that portability costs you money and power). With that, you can also build a lightbox/set up almost any lighting you want with a little DIY effort. I don't recall if the strobist gets into product photography, but if he doesn't look up DIY instructions for lightboxes.
Beyond that, just start playing with lighting.
>>2720939
Very insightful. Going to see about getting the hardware to move my flash off camera and I'll see how that goes. Then I'll probably commit to getting the rest of the starter package. Thanks senpai.
>>2720970
My pleasure. Also, a weakness of many of the cheaper, but bright light sources (CFLs and LEDs) is that they tend to have crappy CRI.
CRI is basically how little they change the color of the subject (like how sodium vapor lights are really, really yellow). Thanks to software white balance, this isn't as big of a deal as it used to be, but it can still be a pain with cheap light sources. The key thing to worry about here isn't so much that they all have really high CRI, but that all of the lights you use have around the same CRI. Otherwise, you're dealing with mixed color temperatures which is a major, major pain in the ass.
As for getting speedlights off camera:
smile.amazon.com/Yongnuo-Wireless-Trigger-Receiver-Shutter/dp/B0042TYNJ4
This might not be what you need for your camera, but Yongnuo probably makes something that works with your stuff. If you decide to go the speedlight route, then definitely go with Yongnuos. They're dirt cheap and work great. The only downside of going with something like this versus studio strobes is that they're weaker.
But really, you can do a lot of this stuff with just a couple of flashlights and ingenuity...it's one of those deals where the bespoke products makes things easier, not possible if you get what I'm saying.
>>2720918
I'd get a YN300 II (5500k only) LED or something like that as a work light.
But then mostly strobes. They'll make your life far easier.
Get a bunch of 560 III/IV and a -TX.