I am looking for a good portable continuous lighting setup. I have a small budget, but am not sure of a good name/product to get. Any help would be really appreciated. Fluorescent is prefered.

sure you dont want to use strobes instead? They're usually more powerful for the same price.

...and they run off batteries (the smaller ones).

Continuous allows for easier setup. I've looked around and quite a few vendor and user reviews point to fluorescents. I know they are more money up front, but I wanna see if there is a set I can upgrade upon as time goes by.

I still think that you'll be better off with a strobe because of 1) control 2) portability 3) dont have to plug it in 4) 'more' power (which you will find is nice to have) .. i've only used one of those cheap continuous lighting kits at school and was not 'happy' - but those were not fluorescent. I just want to make sure you don't go down the wrong road and hate your lights in the future.

In any case, you might want to ask over at the strobist group on flickr. here. Everybody there is like a off-camera lighting nut ... continuous or not (despite the name). Also tell them how much you're willing to spend.

Just make sure you do a search for a duplicate thread if you do ask ... here's what 'continuous lighting' shows.

That's all I know...

There is a book on lighting I need to get as well, that will be before I purchase anything so I have some reference material.

Oh, yeah .. before you even do that, you might want to download/printoff/read this pdf (pretty much everything that has been posted on strobist.com from 'lighting 101') ...

You might find that you may omit the book purchase but purchase a book anyway just for the heck of it ... The PDF.

It's like ... the source of all knowledge for off camera lighting related stuff. From equipment to techniques. Written for strobes of course, because strobes are better, but the same kind of stuff is also used for continuous lighting (or any kind of lighting). =P

What do you plan on shooting? That makes a huge difference on your lighting requirements.

Portraits mostly, I want to make up a portable studio basically. The book is actually part of a series I have 3 of the others; portraits, macros and exposure. Its put together like a class and I have been very happy with the others.

For Portraits, I don't think fluorescent is the way to go. Not enough light if you want to modify it. One you start adding umbrellas or soft boxes, I think your going to have a difficult time. I have several Balcar zoomlite 45 with 40 watt bulbs that I use for fill lights when I'm doing available light shots in office and warehouse environments. Even with a fairly directional reflector, I only get 1/60 @ f/2 iso 100 at 3 feet. Have you looked at something like the Calumet Genesis 200? $170 each.

For still life and macro images, florescent is fine since you can use a longer shutter speed.

If you want, you can come up to Temecula and check out the studio. It might be helpful! Temecula is about an hour north of San Diego on the 15 freeway.

Chip