OttLite Lightbulbs

I'd heard a lot about OttLites and how great they were, but I hadn't gotten around to looking for any. One day last week, I was shopping in a craft and hobby store with my mom and they happened to have OttLites on sale. They had the huge ones, ones with crafting trays attached, etc. that were well more than I was ready to spend on the spur of the moment. However, they also had just plain 11w (replaces a 40w bulb) light bulbs on sale. I have three desk lamps to use to light my light box, so I picked up three bulbs.

Even on sale, they were still a little pricey, so when I finally got around to trying them out, I started out with one to see if they were worth the price. With only one bulb, I could see the answer was a definite YES. So I replaced all the bulbs (now I have to figure out what to do with three loose 60 watt bulbs as I threw out the packaging and the OttLite bulbs are smaller so their boxes won't work).

I took quite a few pictures this evening of jewelry I'll be listing soon. Because my camera doesn't let me change the shutter speed, I still had to adjust the lighting in the pictures, but they came out really well just the same. Here is one of them, featuring a bracelet I'll be listing soon:



The color is bright and clear. They still don't *quite* get true color with purple, but it's closer than what I could get before. One set of pictures that I took were of some purple flower earrings that I haven't listed because I couldn't get the purple to look on the pictures the same way that it does in person. They're still not perfect, but it's closer. Here is a picture of the earrings:





They are still more blue than the purple is, but at least now they look closer to being purple at all. Before, they just looked blue no matter what kind of lighting I used.

So, that's another step in the right direction for taking better pictures for my shop. I still want to find more props (like the shells I used in an earlier picture of a blue glass and pearl bracelet), but just a simple white drape with a floral drape underneath for subtle color and texture will work okay for now.