Hi. I built a 4 light set from some Home Depot fixtures. Here's what I ended up with.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/113053184636543874722/posts/CW4WWyDQvvR

Here's the spreadsheet of parts with links.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap6oMFKAB1-4dHRhNzgtbVdtRTFNZzBLNU5QZVZBVlE#gid=1

Cheers

Looks great. Are these dimmable?

Very nice! Curious what the ballasts are...I'll look it up later. Are they instant-on, noise free?

I built a different style using cake pans and the 55watt CFL Kino bulbs. Each head is 220 watt (4 bulbs 2 ballasts). The ballasts and reflectors were sourced from a fish tank supply company (ahsupply.com) and work beautifully. All-in mine were about $350 per unit including mounting hardware for the grid. They are not dimmable as they were designed for my green screen.

I might try building some of yours for other purposes!

Looks great. Are these dimmable?

No. That could be next because the 2' lamps are 17 watts and the 4' lamps are 32W. Being able to dim the 4' lamps would be cool.

Very nice! Curious what the ballasts are...I'll look it up later. Are they instant-on, noise free?

I built a different style using cake pans and the 55watt CFL Kino bulbs. Each head is 220 watt (4 bulbs 2 ballasts). The ballasts and reflectors were sourced from a fish tank supply company (ahsupply.com) and work beautifully. All-in mine were about $350 per unit including mounting hardware for the grid. They are not dimmable as they were designed for my green screen.

I might try building some of yours for other purposes!

Great looking lights and studio. I dig the rectangle pieces on the wall (almost as much as the guitars).

The ballasts came with the Lithonia fixtures and they are instant-on and operate above 42Khz. The actual part is ACCUPRO T8 MODEL AP-332IP-H-UNV. The first '3' is the number of lamps. They have a 2, 3 and 4 version of the ballast.

The biggest challenge I had was mounting them to stands. I'd much rather have a ball joint mounting plate but they're $85 each for Kinoflos. I used $15 articulating arms for monitors but there's got to be something better. GL

Thanks! Might try building on of these!

For mine I just used a simple yoke type mount, bent the aluminum myself. Before the studio was finished I did use them on light stands as the yoke has a standard 5/8" on it.

Ahh...and the rectangles are all rigid fiberglass acoustic insulation panels I built. Same materials as in the high end Auralex Elite and SonoSuede panels which cost a fortune. I got to choose my own fabric colors and each 2" thick panel totaled about $30 in materials. A bit more for the 4" thick. Compared to $100 to $150 per panel... worth the effort as I covered about 40% of all the wall surfaces. Room sounds great even with the greenscreen!

About 10 years ago I built a number of dimmable fluorescent "fixtures" using Lutron
Ballasts and dimmers. I'm using quotes here as it
wasn't a fixture as such, no housing. Simply the ballast in an enclosure
with the dimmer, a detachable head cable essentially like the kinoflo
single and the tube with lamp holder. At that time cost of ballast and dimmer
was about $400. Not cheap but also not my money. These were for T12s.

Very recently I've looked at doing the same for T8s. Price of ballast and
dimmer about $130. Don't have part numbers with me but
Could get them if someone was interested. Do know however that at least
on the T12 version there is a magenta shift when dimming.

@Robert thanks for the details. I'm going to build a couple. Can't have too many props for shoots.

@Jase thanks for the info on the dimmer. I've been thinking about building a dimmable ballast box. I knew some color shift was possible so the slide to magenta will help me. I have some ballasts in mind. Cheers