DIY Home Depot compact fluorescent lighting fixture

[Chris Kenny]

Just posted over at Indie4K about a light we built last week.



More photos, a bunch of tech specs, and a sample shot with the light at the link above.

I know in this crowd there have to be a lot of people doing things like this. Post some photos!

 

[Brent J. Craig]

Did you manage to find cf bulbs with decent color temperature and reasonable flicker characteristics?

 

[Chris Kenny]

We used nVision daylight bulbs. The Red says they're almost exactly 5000K, and there's no noticeable flicker. There is a bit of a green spike, but it's not much and it's easy to get rid of with the tint control.

They're about $9 each at Home Depot for the 100W-equivalents.

 

[Alexis Hanawalt]

Trust me, there's more than a green spike. Those bulbs aren't full spectrum. You need the flourescent bulbs that are designed for people who suffer winter depression (aka "SAD") - they're a bit more pricey, but you WILL notice the difference. They have a high CRI, which is what's most important. Kino basically adopted the full spectrum technology and charges ridiculous prices for it - but their bulbs don't have a CRI as high as some of the bulbs you can get from place like this: http://www.lumiram.com/

 

[Chris Kenny]

Yeah, we've had our eye on various higher-end bulbs, and we'll probably pick some up and do side-by-side testing. The nVision bulbs aren't labeled for CRI, but color rendering isn't too bad. Most low-cost CFLs are in the mid-80s these days. They were a good quick fix for the shoot last week.

These are pretty reasonably priced, and would give us a bit of an output boost as well.

 

[jbeale]

I'd be very interested to see the results of any color rendering tests you do comparing different CFL bulbs. There is a very large range of price, so you'd expect there to be some difference in the output.