i was reading on jorenclark.com about cheap lighting (his site's very cool by the way) and there were a couple notes about what type of bulbs i should use. so i went out to a local hardware store and wal-mart to pick some up, but couldn't find any. am i just blind or do i need to look somewhere else? here's what i'm looking for:

500-watt Tota bulbs
color balanced ECA bulbs

if somebody could shed some light on this for me i'd readlly appriciate it.

I doubt you will be able to buy a Lowell Tota bulb in a hardware or department store. You will probably have to buy the bulbs through Lowell itself. (or do a quick Google search, Im sure you can find something)

Is for the "color balanced ECA bulbs" you are looking for. I think Joren was just specifying that you need to look for a light bulb that gives off white light (3200K) as opposed to the orangish tint of tungsten lighting. You should not have any problem finding these... Im pretty sure that all large stores carry them.

Thanks for the love...
yeah, you probably would have better luck finding those kind of bulbs in photography stores. Hardware stores probably won't have balanced bulbs. And if they do, they wouldn't be listed by color temperature. I think I give a link to a online store where they're relatively inexpensive. That's probably your best bet.

sweet thanks a lot guys

3200K is tungsten. 5600K is daylight.

white is some weird range like 4200K.

ooh... sorry, I got my numbers switched around. Tungsten is 3200, White light is 5500.