Best kind of light

[Chukie]

I have made myself a light box/tent for taking some shots of flowers and the like in the house when the weather is poor outside and was woundering what is the best kind of light to use ( home made cheap ) led's,tubes,halogen or just normal bulbs i know natural is best but it's for in-doors and night time any help would be really helpful will be nipping B&Q at the weekend
Thank's
Trev

[Geoff F]

See if you can find 'daylight' quality bulbs. Not sure if they are still available to the general public.

Whatever you get, do a custom white balance with the camera first. If you aren't familar with this technique it is basically just shooting a very slightly off white piece of paper, or something similar, and setting the White Balance control to 'Custom'. Read your camera manual for more details. It is the only way to get true colours and, once you get the hang of things, only takes a few seconds.

Also shooting RAW would give you a second chance to adjust the Colour Temperature if necessary.

ps. Do you find some shops try to make you feel guilty about buying 'real' lightbulbs and try to sell you those expensive horrible coloured low energy bulbs instead.

[wrogers]

just as a hint, most Low-energy bulbs are about 2700K if you want to fix the white balance. daylight is 6000K
K = Kelvins - Temperature (Celsius + 273)

hope this helps
Will