$70 Fluorescent home depot "soft box"...
 

http://www.homedepot.com/prel80/HDUS...ductOID=526161

(that takes you to the whole page, click on "2 X 2 Ft. 2-Light Troffer")

Thought someone on a budget might want to check that out...mount that on a stand and you have a instant soft box, eh?

Alex,
Well, it wouldn't be quite so simple. Troffers are designed to be wired into a ceiling grid, so it will take a little bit of minor electrical work to adapt it to a plug.

These units are also a bit heavy and not designed to be portable. Heavy aluminum without finished edges.

More significantly, this light uses a pretty conventional office-style ballast and lamp. It's likely to produce a bit of flicker in your footage. Also, run-of-the-mill ceiling fixtures like this are generally designed to produce a "bat-wing" shaped light distribution. That is, if you were to plot how light from the fixture is distributed while looking at the fixture end-on, the pattern would resemble bat wings angled downward. This can make for some odd patterns when used at close range.

So, all in all, it would be more trouble and less useful than it would be worth, even at $79.

Nice idea, though.

Hi,

For $40.17 each at Home Depot, including four bulbs, just bought eight 4' x 2' Lithonia GT8 troffers to light my garage studio:

48" tubes
32W using T8 ballast (advertised as 25% more efficient than standard T12 ballast , flicker-free and silent).

Yes, these units are heavy and require that little wiring plug for $4. The included bulbs are Sylvania 32W, 1" x 48", 3500K (could be 3400, I'm reciting from memory) with CRI=75. The CRI is nothing to brag about.