Continuous Light
Basic Indoor hydroponics Gardening Guide - Indoor Grow Lights for Hydroponics Systems
A great indoor garden requires a good grow light. It could mean the difference between success and failure. Having the right hydroponic light is the single-most important and costly decision in setting up your garden.
Hydroponic grow lights come in three main types:
Incandescent lights
These are the usual lights found in homes. They are generally a poor choice for garden grown lights because of their limited light spectrum and inefficiency.
HID (High Intensity Discharge) grow lights
Producing more light (up to 10x more lumens/watt than an incandescent light),are more efficient. Drawbacks would be, they produce more heat, generally more expensive than incandescent lights and requires the additional expense and maintenance with ballast. It takes around 100 hours before hydroponic HID grow lights reach their optimum working conditions, or until they reach light intensity and color stability.
Natural Sunlight
Expense for acquiring artificial lights can be skipped by using sunlight. This is done with the use of solar room, greenhouse or large windows which allows plenty of sunlight. Or you can do this outdoors; hydroponics does not necessarily mean the cultivation of plants indoors but it growing plants without the use of soil.
Basic setup for an indoor garden is 1000w of lighting for and area of 16-25 square feet of plant area. Reflectors and/or light movers should also be considered as they improve efficiency of the indoor hydroponic gardening system. Ballast may also be needed as numerous hydroponic grow lighting require igniting.
Some Basic Facts
Before plugging in your grow light
Different plants require different levels or types of lighting, this paragraph would deal on some simple know-how on how to make an effective lighting setup. In setting up your garden, it is essential that you determine your growing area in order to determine the best lighting setup for you. Light is an essential factor in the growth of plants, it is important that the lighting solution you chose for your garden is adequate for its size. A poor or ill advised decision would certainly reflect on the quality of plants you produced. Inappropriate budgeting like cost cutting specially on lighting would just prove to be uneconomical and inefficient in the long run.
A general rule for lighting that area coverage is determined by a light wattage output. Reflectors might be used to increase the light area and reach corners but effectiveness is still determined by this formula.
Day and Night Cycles
The type of plant and its stage of growth generally determine the amount of light needed. A common cycle is that with 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness which is recommended for its vegetative growth phase.
For seedlings, a continuous light source is needed until the first real leaves appear. When the leaves appear, the regular 18/6 light cycle is used. Fluorescent or incandescent lights are best for seedling because of the low heat and soft light they generate. Automated timers maybe used to ensure consistent light cycles. Inexpensive timers are also available; this can be found any hardware or Home Depot/ Lowe’s type store.
Light and Photosynthesis
The plants exposure to light intensity, duration and light color directly affects the amount of energy needed for photosynthesis. The color of the light, Blue simulates the summer sun, Orange for autumn seem to stimulate photosynthesis best. The light spectrum produced by metal halide bulbs (Blue lights) and high pressure sodium bulbs (red/ orange lights) produce this effects. HID grow lights produce these effects owing to their popularity to hobbyist and professionals. Combination of metal halide and high pressure sodium bulbs provides the complete spectrum of light produced by the sun.
Use Caution When Working with Lights
The combination of water, electricity and chemicals in such a closed-in space makes the grow room one of the most dangerous places in your house. Keep in mind to separate your ballast by elevating it from the water-containing areas of your hydroponic growing system.
About the Author
My name is guy. I am the founder and owner of the urbangardenershop.com.au . I fell in love with hydroponics gardening. As time went by I gathered a vast knowledge base and 2 years ago I decided to find a way to make hydroponics gardening a hobby that anyone can peruse. I added a hydroponic gardening information center to our hydroponic supplies site that offers a large range of hydroponics articles. Thank you for your interest and feel free to ask questions on hydroponics gardening in our site
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/page/hydroponicsystems/default.asp
http://www.urbangardenershop.com.au/category/25/default.asp
Continuous light to flash lights conversion?
I am new to still photography. I come from a film world where I know how many 1ks, 650w etc. are needed for a scene. But strobe lights are measured in watts per second not per hour...so I have absolutely no idea what I should be buying...are there any guides online that are good at explaining what wattage is necessary to light a scene (I've already looked on strobist and found nothing helpful) -- Any sort of conversion that can be done?
Thanks!
Well wattage isn't that important for stills. Much more important is the output of the flash. How long that output lasts also isn't such an issue. As such I would think start looking at guidenumbers instead of wattage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_number
Flash color temperature is from the Kelvin scale. I believe that's the same for film (video, not to be confused with photographic film). And you still use gels.
Advice:
Still photographers often think of photographic film when you say film. I had to read your question thrice before I figured out you meant film moving pictures rather than photographic film
Continuous Light
Profoto Continuous Light Features and Benefits
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Introduction to Photography Studio Lighting
I want to share with you some of my experiences with studio lighting to save you all the trial and error that I've been through over the years. I'll refer to the subject you are lighting as 'the model' even though it may not be an actual model, I just mean whoever or whatever you are photographing.
As I see it there are two distinct skill sets:
1) Using available light. This is all about arranging the model to make the most of lighting you can't control. For example, shooting outdoors. You can't move the sun around, but you can move the model and your position relative to the model, so that the sun is in front, behind, or wherever. So there are clearly lots of skills involved in making the most of available light. What this article is about, though, is the other skill set:
2) Using studio light. Now it doesn't necessarily have to involve a studio, but this skill set is about how to work with lights that you can move around. Studio Lighting can be daunting because you have complete control. You can't blame external factors like the overcast sky. But the flip side is, once you do know what you're doing with studio lighting, you can really create some amazing photos.
Here's a brief history of my experiences with studio lighting. When I first got interested in doing photo shoots, I had no lights, and used ambient room light. The immediate downside to that is the lack of light - unless you have a really good lens which lets you have a wide open aperture like F1.8, or set the film speed (ISO) to something high (which makes the picture grainy), then to get a good exposure requires a slow shutter speed. Hand holding the camera was impossible like that, so I used to use a tripod and had to tell the model to hold very still every time I took a shot. Needless to say, the photos weren't very good!
Next I invested in the cheapest lighting kit I could find, which consisted of two Portaflash DL1000 lights. These were a huge step forward because now I could actually hand hold the camera plus I could move the lights around. There was a downside, though... Those lights are continuous rather than strobe, which means they don't flash. So the 1000w bulbs are blasting out light all the way through the shoot. That meant the model got hot - there's nothing less appealing than a sweaty model with her spray tan melting! Plus the Portaflash lights weren't 'daylight balanced', which meant that the pictures all come out with an orange hue.
After a year or two with those, I then invested in a kit consisting of two Bowens Esprit Gemini 500s. These are daylight balanced strobe lights, so colors came out properly, it wasn't killing my electricity bill quite as much, and the models weren't being slowly cooked by the lights. I still use these same lights today, several years later, and thoroughly recommend them.
A brief note on strobe lighting... Strobe lights (also called flash lights, because they flash) actually have two bulbs in them. One is similar to a household bulb and shines constantly so you can see how the light falls on your model. This is called the 'modeling light'. This gives you a good idea of what the photo should look like when you take it; however the modeling light isn't bright enough to give you enough light for a hand held shot, in the same way that ambient room lights aren't bright enough. So the second light, the flash, kicks in at the moment you take the photo and blasts out loads of light in that split second, meaning that you can have a nice quick shutter speed and thus you can hand hold it, or even have the model jumping mid-air. Any motion will be frozen.
So having tried both, I definitely recommend strobe lights rather than continuous lights. One thing to bear in mind with strobe lights, is to turn off all ambient room lights while you're doing the shoot. This is because the modeling bulb is about the same brightness as the normal room light, and the two will combine to give you a false impression of what the photo will look like when you take it. False because when the flash goes off, it will completely drown out non-flash light as it's much brighter. So the modeling light, which is designed to show you how the lighting will look in the photo, shouldn't be combined with ambient room light, because the ambient light will not appear in the actual photo due to the flash being so much brighter.
Enough for now... If you found this useful, please check out my photography e-book, "How to Start a Successful Photography Business" at the link below, which is packed with useful tips to take your photography to the next level.
Titus Powell
Professional photographer
Photography E-book: Make Money Photographing People
About the Author
