Decent diffuse lighting rig for night time work

[hpaten]

Anyone have any good suggestions on a good night time work set up for lighting? I used to bounce one of those home depot big halogen work light set ups off of a wall and ceiling with decent results but now I'm in a decent studio with very high ceilings... thought about angling a piece of foam off the ceiling to get a decent angle on the reflection and otherwise am thinking about getting a photographer's light kit with an umbrella and wheels... I'm doing some full size figures and so I have to get the light source to be fairly high up...

I prefer to try to get good diffuse lighting as that's what works best for me in the day. The direct light makes me focus too much on one area and forget the big picture... and the completely undirected light like overhead flourescents.... are... well... not pleasant.

Anyhow before I go wasting any more hours researching on heavier dutier photo-light stands or running out to home depot I thought I'd ask as I'm sure someone else with similar light preferences has solved this problem in a very simple way...

Thanks!

[fritchie]

Sorrry I'm a bit slow with this reply, but I have used quite a variety of lights for a dozen years or so (to work, as you seem to be asking, as well as for photography). I have a studio with several overhead, 4 light fluorescents; plus 1 floorlamp halogen remaining of 3 I originally bought; plus 2 overhead smaller halogens and 4 - 5 overhead spots or floods. All of these can be turned on/off and redirected, though some not easily.

This was builtup over time as needed, and is not as cheap as you might want at first. Just start with something and change as you like.

[The Forge]

I got a book on photographing art work and they recommend that you use 4 lights, 1 high and 1 low at 45 deg. to each side of work. This way the reflected light is bounced back at the other lights with a neutral background color. It works great for my pieces. I just got some 500W halogen work lights from northern tool for $7.99 each. Great buy. Homedepot had 250W for same price.

[evaldart]

Indoors I like the 500 w photofloods (the blue ones). Got to get them from the photo supply store. You can put them into regular clip lamps if you dont leave them on too long. Very powerful, very white light.