LED spot lightsCeiling

You don’t need the most expensive gear or products to capture a great shot. There are many simple alternatives that exist around you - particularly in your home - that can help achieve the result that you want. We embarked on this DIY photography journey by showing you how to DIY an inexpensive light box, diffusers, reflectors, and the usability of each product. This time we’ll show you how you can utilise regular items found in your home as the diffuser panels for your DIY diffusers and light box and the different outputs with each differing material. Tracing Paper Keeping the lighting setup and exposure triangle constant, we’ve decided to experiment with different layers of tracing paper to test out it will affect the outputs.

An incandescent light bulb’s warm glow is dictated entirely by its technology. Incandescent – as the name implies – work by forcing heat through a metal (normally tungsten) filament that then heats up and glows. This consequently generates light, while also lending the light bulb its unmistakable warm colour. Even though halogen light bulbs work differently, they also possess a similarly warm glow.

Purchasing an electronic driver is the best way to avoid this. However, this in itself poses its own set of unique issues from ensuring that the driver itself is LED ready (some were designed before the days of LED and therefore don’t play ball too well) to then making sure that it delivers the correct current and voltage (normally 12V Direct Current in the case of LED MR16 spotlight bulbs).

LED Spot LightsIndoor

That’s a wonderful guide you have provided here. Good quality lights and brightness are needed whether it is about your house, office or any other place. Thanks. The above guide is helpful.

Aside from this, there really is nothing else to worry about when replacing a GU10 spotlight bulb. Simply remove the old one, twist the LED into the fitting, lock it into place and then stand back and marvel as your lighting bill begins to plummet.

GU10 spotlight bulbs are a mains voltage spotlight and therefore much easier to replace; simply remove your old light bulb and replace it with an LED equivalent. Comparing the equivalent wattages or lumen values of both light bulbs will ensure that the newly installed LED looks the same as the old light bulb in terms of its brightness and quality.

Findings: The light becomes more diffused and thus achieving a duller output when additional layers are added to the diffuser panels.

LED spotlights have enjoyed a monumental surge in popularity in recent years, and with good reason. They’re modern, easy to replace and above all, versatile.

As a general rule, LED light bulbs use around 10% of the energy of incandescent light bulbs, as indicated by their equivalent wattages.

Our last experiment is with textured material like this bubble wrap. For this shot, we opted to use the flashlight from two cellphones instead of the regular studio light (as the studio light is too strong and will diminish the shadows formed by each plastic bubble). Overall, we feel that the effect gave a cool touch to the overall photo.

This may have been true a several years ago, but today LED light bulbs successfully mimic the warm glow and brightness of your older filament light bulbs flawlessly while also shaving up to 90% off your lighting bill.

Of course! Dimming LED light bulbs is not as straightforward as dimming any incandescent or halogen light bulb. LED technology requires a different set of circumstances to dim correctly. For a full explanation of what this involves, from how to calculate load levels to which type of dimmer switch to use, please see our extensive dimming guide.

LED spotLight Bulbs

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LED Spot lightsfor trucks

MR16 light bulbs aren’t quite as straightforward. As a low voltage light bulb, these require a transformer to step down the mains voltage to a more comfortable 12V that the light bulb can deal with. If you’re replacing halogen MR16 spotlights with LED equivalents, you’ll probably also need to purchase a modern, electronic LED driver that is designed to deal with the lower wattages of LED.

White Paper As compared to tracing paper, the white paper has less translucency and thus will require either a slower shutter speed, a higher ISO, or a larger aperture to achieve a brighter output. We used a slower shutter speed for the example below. A tip when working with a slower shutter speed is to utilise a tripod to eliminate any blur caused by handheld movements.

Translucent Coloured Paper If you're thinking of adding a fancy colour overlay to your product shoot, opt for translucent coloured paper. We used colour printed cellophane wrapping paper to achieve the below effect. Tip: You can also use coloured translucent plastic bags.

Ultimately with the extra effort involved, we would normally advise simply returning your circuit to mains voltage and using GU10s instead. This obviates the need for a transformer completely and eradicates any potential compatibility issues. Think of it as cutting out the middleman and giving yourself a nice, clean circuit with no unnecessary tinkering going on in the background. However, if you do find yourself in a situation where MR16 spotlight bulbs are the only option, a full range of LED drivers can be found on Lightbulbs Direct.

To many, the main barrier to switching to LED light bulbs is both a lack of information and the false impression that LED is more expensive and ultimately inferior to older technologies.

Look inside any kitchen, bedroom, hallway or living room, and it’s highly likely that you’ll be presented with at least one – if not a cluster – of tiny spotlights nestled neatly in the ceiling.

Put simply, LED spotlights look and work in exactly the same way as your old halogen or incandescent spotlights, but use modern LED technology as their primary light source. This carries with it a whole slew of benefits, from reduced running and replacement costs to withered energy bills and the rewarding feeling of contributing to a cleaner planet.

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White Plastic Bags Similar to tracing paper, a translucent garbage bag works well as a diffuser sheet. However, they are quite fragile and not as easy to handle when cutting into regular sizes to fit the frames of your DIY photography products.

The list doesn’t stop here! Be crafty and experiment with items you have at home like textured materials, plastic bags with patterns and much more. Find something that works well for you or a material that gives you the edge over others, and don’t forget to share or inspire your photography community to try it too! For similar articles: 3 Product Photography Essentials You Can DIY How To Create an Inexpensive Light Box From Scratch

Learn the best ways to create amazing images and videos, share your works with the community and be inspired by our community.

Despite a moderately higher initial cost, LED spotlights can pay for themselves by way of reduced energy costs within a year or less, so when you consider that LED light bulbs are designed to last 20-50x longer than traditional incandescent lamps, the potential savings associated with them can be massive.

As you can see in the diagram above, the colour temperature is measured in Kelvin, with the relevant value denoted by a number, followed by a ‘k’. The lower the number, the ‘warmer’ temperature, simple.

An old-school magnetic transformer will work just fine with LED light bulbs, but transformers are similar to dimmer systems in that they normally have a predetermined wattage range that they expect their light bulb(s) to sit within. Replacing your MR16 light bulbs with LED equivalents is going to obliterate your cumulative wattage (which is a good thing) but it does also mean that you’re probably going to drop below your transformer’s minimum wattage requirements. This can result in flickering light bulbs, strobing or outright failure of the circuit.

LED spotlights may be relatively new, but they’re certainly not new-fangled; so go on, tuck in, because having your cake and eating it has never tasted so good.

LED Spot lightsOutdoor

To successfully mimic the glow of an incandescent filament light bulb, it’s best to go for a warm white light bulb that sits between 2700k and 3000k. This works especially well in homely, traditional environments where cosiness is key. The ‘cooler’ temperatures look whiter and most often used in places such as kitchens and bathrooms where a clean white or cool white light is preferred. The daylight bluer options are most often found in retail environments, public areas and workplaces where natural light may otherwise be restricted.

Since its rise to prominence, LED technology has rapidly permeated almost every rung of the lighting industry, and LED alternatives to nearly every light bulb design are now widely available. Spotlights are no exception.

The above effect was achieved by placing the left light box panel with yellow translucent paper and the right with blue translucent paper.

LED Spot Lights12V

The advent of LED has brought with it a tranche of new benefits. The fact that you can still revel in a spotlight’s sexy aesthetics while also cutting your lighting bill by up 90% sounds almost too good to be true, but I can assure you it’s not.

Next, we coloured some parts of the bubble wrap with permanent markers and the colours showed! Doesn’t it come off a little kaleidoscopic-ish?

The key to an LED spotlight’s versatility lies in its colour and beam angle. Wider beam angles and warmer colours are great for ambient lighting, where the light is dispersed over a wider area. Cooler colours and narrower angles are ideal for highlighting specific fixtures or areas of a room, which is particularly useful in commercial or public settings.

However, one of the many virtues of LED is that it can recreate a whole host of colours, from the warm white of traditional light bulbs to brighter, whiter, modern equivalents and beyond.