Are you interested in how to put together a flexible and robust lighting system that is relatively inexpensive?
A flexible lighting system is something that I have wanted to play with for a while, but like everything else in photography it seems to be a fairly expensive area to get into, at least when you consider the relative simplicity of a light-bulb.
Thankfully there are a number of cheap and widely-available or easily-made items that can provide most of the same functionality at a small fraction of the price. For under US$75, this article will show you how to put together a flexible and robust lighting system that is both useful and relatively easy on the hip pocket.
This author of the article advises using the inexpensive 500watt high-power halogen lights you find at Home Depot. You need to overcome the problem of the bulbs throwing a very yellow light that is not desirable for color photography. He suggests replacement bulbs available for these halogen lights that are tinted blue to cancel out the warm color temperature of the original bulb. The blue tint of the bulbs is designed to give off a light that is closer to daylight. Lumiram (true light) bulbs make big differences in colors like peach and pink. Buy the good full spectrum bulbs from Europe. They make a cheap copy in Asia but the active ingredients are not nearly as good.