Westcott Intros New Much Brighter Fluorescent Lamps For Their Spiderlite TD-5’s
This week, Westcott introduced the brightest fluorescent bulbs yet for their popular Spiderlite TD-5 studio lights. I got a chance to work with these in the past few weeks, and these new brighter bulbs just make a huge difference (they give you at least a full-stop more light).
The bulbs themselves are only about 30% larger in size, and they’re now 50-watts each (where the old bulbs were just 30 watts). So, when you get a 5-pack of their lamps, here’s what you get:
(4) 50-watt Fluorescent lamps (equivalent of 200 watts each), plus….
(1) 20-watt Fluorescent lamp (the modeling light)
For a total of 900 watts of power.
The 5-pack of bulbs above sell for around $179 (retail), and a single lamp goes for around $45. You can learn more about them, and Westcott’s Spiderlite kits by clicking here.
I believe Westcott has updated all the kits that they sell direct (well, the kits from around $800 and up), to the new blubs, and B&H Photo is now including these new brighter bulbs as part of their “Westcott Scott Kelby Studio Kit Deluxe Kit” (I’m really delighted that B&H is now including bulbs with the kit). Here’s the link to my kit with bulbs at B&H Photo.
Anyway, I know a lot of you either already have one of my kits, or are thinking of picking one up (I’m using my kit on my Lightroom Tour again myself), and these new bulbs really make a difference.
Note: I don’t get a kick-back, royalty, etc. on sales of these kits. B&H Photo has made the “Scott Kelby” kit available as a courtesy to my students who see me using the Spiderlites in my seminars, here on the blog, and during my Lightroom Live Tour, which kicks off again very soon. My thanks to B&H Photo for packaging them together and making things easy for us all. And as always, B&H offers free shipping to NAPP members in the US too. 
I’m a bit confused.
You said:
“here’s what you get:
(4) 50-watt Fluorescent lamps (equivalent of 200 watts each), plus….
(1) 20-watt Fluorescent lamp (the modeling light)”
Are these not “Hot lights”? Why would you need a modeling light for hot lights?
Just curious, these look just like the extra CFL’s I have laying around my house? Are they?
B&H offers free shipping to NAPP members as long as the members don’t have post office box addresses.
Bring your Lightroom Tour to the UK. In fact bring a couple of tours to the UK. Ben Wilmore was sold out when he was here last year and its how I heard about NAPP and joined up. Its a real shame that we’ve had nothing so far this year.
Hi Scott,
This means the FL system might be a bit better than it used to be for subject movement, I assume? I haven’t used the original, but I bet it’s amazing.
Jaun,
The CFLs you have at home are probably “cool white” phosphors and the Kelvin temperature would not be in the range used in this specialty lamp, Kelvin – 5500 Degrees
Because of the added cost of the special Phosphors, to achieve the CRI index, and the low production runs, the cost will be typically higher. These prices seem higher than I would expect however. But when you are the only milkman on the block, you get to set the price.
I’m getting these for sure, the old ones are great, but brighter is better.
Hi Scott,
I have no experience with lighting and I am a “just for funner”. I have purchased your kit from B&H. My exposure reading is 1/60th to 1/40th at f4 iso 400. I would like to be at 1/125. Is the only thing to do is to raise my iso to 800? or go to f2.8? I would like to just move the lights closer or something but this seems not to change much except the way it looks.
I appreciate any time you might have in your busy schedule…
Hmmm…. I’m finding the same thing… even WITH the brighter bulbs. Maybe settle for the texture warmth of higher iso’s with the newer generation of cameras.
Use strobes for lower isos?
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