God bless those folks at IKEA. One of the things I’ve lamented over the years is not having a good spotlight to use on something as small as a 1:8 scale figure. There are a number of overpriced photographic lighting solutions, but that’s not what I want to spend money on. I have been using black poster board to create a shaft of light to cut through the darkness, but I’ve always wanted to create a spotlight for an even tighter light beam. On my last trip to IKEA I found the DIODER.
The DIODER is meant to be a shelf or cabinet light. When I first saw them my brain lit up. The compactness of LED makes it useful for toy photography purposes. The downside is the power output of the lights is pretty low, so not yet ready for main setup purposes.
As a spotlight in an otherwise dark and shadowy set, they’re good enough, as I found while using them in the Narika shoot. They also make great fill in lights. For the Narika shoot I used it a lot as a narrow fill light, providing another fill option to use in conjunction or instead of a reflector.
LEDs generate so little heat, they’re perfect to light up display cases full of PVC figures. When you’re done taking pics, you can mount them in your growing collection of display cases. They are so thin that even mounted under glass shelves (like in a DETOLF) they won’t attract too much attention to themselves with strategic placement.
Okay, now that we’ve got our little disc of light, we need a snoot to make a spotlight. A snoot is simply an obstruction to prevent light from spilling all over the place so that it casts a narrow beam. With the size of the DIODER, constructing a snoot shouldn’t be a problem at all with cardboard. Luckily enough, the box from a bar of soap is just the right size to fit all around. Just pre-form the box a little to make it easy to slide the DIODER in, tear a little slot for the cord, and there you have a spotlight.
You could probably get the same effect with a pocket flashlight and wrap some cardboard around the front to create a snoot for your spotlight. The nice thing about the DIODER is that it’s got a diffuser built into it.
It’s not the greatest thing ever. There’s a ton of actual lighting equipment that will do a better job, but I look for things that can pull double duty or just using things in ways they weren’t meant to be used that work anyway. I was happy to find this for my display cases. At $40 they might be a little too expensive to get just to play around with.
Using the DIODERs gives a little tighter control versus just a desk lamp. The shot below was with the swing-arm desk lamp on for a little ambient lighting to cut the contrast a bit. The basic setup of the shot is above. The lamp isn’t positioned exactly, so you’ll have to play around with it. The DIODER isn’t a strong light, so holding it through the soap box a few inches away wasn’t going to blow out the figure with enough surrounding light to soften the contrast.
The purpose of this “tutorial” isn’t to get you to buy these lights or to show a neat trick, though it’s there. What I’m trying to illustrate is re-purposing things opens avenues, so keep an eye open for those opportunities in all things you do.
Way ahead of you in the lighting up of display cabinets. I used to have LEDs for my bikes and knew their practical and economic advantages. My cabinet is already lit up but not complete yet and I am thinking of getting another to house my remaining figures, as I am already toning down from the figure collecting passion and trying to stop entirely.
LEDs are so good, why people are only waking up to them now must be because there always has been a lack of info about their advantages and benefits. It is about time someone needs to get the word out to others.
I’m so glad to see you do another one of these. I’m going to give it a shot — thanks for doing it!
thats an excellent idea! thx.
interesting, since I have a wireless flash, I use a snoot on it (just roll up some black paper and u get a snoot) to get tight beam of light, just that when i use my flash, I can’t use my lamp for lighting, since my flash is more powerful
Nice, would have gotten that if I still were doing indoor shots. I still have a piece of frosted glass which I bought from IKEA quite a while back because I thought it would make for some interesting shots. Never got to use it in the end ^^
those are really neat, thx for the info… hopefully the ikea here has it ^^
is the dioder color is daylight white or cool white (which is yellowish) ?
In Ikea here they only have the yellowish dioder
There’s no temp specs on the lights, but I have my camera set to 4800K for my normal daylight bulbs and I didn’t change them for the shots with just the DIODER.
I wish I’d picked up the Dioders instead of the Grundtals for my Billy cabinet. The Grundtals have a warm light which I love, but they’re halogen and get enormously hot. The Dioders would be nice and cool.
I have a spare Grundtal I should use as a spotlight (and light the house on fire when the cardboard ignites…).
Yeah, the ones they sell as the lights for the DETOLF’s are halogens and they got hot, so I never set them up for my cases.
Im amazed how you can take things and use them for something completly different.I might check out IKEA for those!
If it wont work out I still can use them in my Detolf ^^
Awesome. LED’s are nice & it’s a shame I lost my LED hand torch. I use to wrap backing paper around it (cudo’s man), when I go out at night & take shots. But I have been using the FlashLight App on my Touch for lighting lately, it’s nice to add a tinge of blue or pink on some shots. – But the Aussie Southern Ocean wind is horrid for outside shots……
Thanks for another great tutorial. I was going to get a load of these dioders to light my my shelves. I’ve wanted to make a spot light or something, I guess I’ll try the flash light method first.
this is a great tutorial, I have been actually looking for different lighting methods and with this, it is going to help a lot.
[...] Just got my lighting ding dings, similar to the one used by comrade Yuki-to and introduced by HappySoda. [...]
Since the DIODER’s power output is very low, what settings should you use on your camera to get a properly exposed shot? Did you use a tripod for that shot?
Tnx! ^^
.-= Jay´s last blog: Jia Gold Bustamante wins Asia Cosplay Meet Championship in Singapore =-.
It depends. If they are being used as the primary light, then definitely use a tripod (I always use one, even if there’s enough light to just hold the camera). Exposure times will be close to a second. If going for the dark background, set the E/V around -1 to -2, otherwise the meter is going to blow things out.
If used as an accent/fill light, then you’d shoot closer to how you normally would.
This is very helpful, thanks for the info ‘ -’)b