Hello there! I am writing to see if anyone has a suggestion on the best lighting equipment for a three month indoor flower bloom/ decomposition time lapse. The area has no outside light and will be a completely artificial environment. The exposures will probably be about 15 seconds twice an hour.

Also, should I time the lights to simulate nightime in order to promote flower growth post gestation?

Any response welcome!

Matt B is probably the resident plant expert.
Typically normal grow lights are horrible to shoot with from my experience.
Plants need a rest (or night cycle) to grow well and not fall over.
I have heard of people switching lights on timers for each photo to get good exposures.

Antz, thanks for the compliment, .... however pkibbe check out this site : http://sciencephotography.com/FAQ/Ch5-plants/ch5plants.html

The author is very responsive and helpful to considered questions.

It's been a while since I've done a 3 month+ (deep) timelapse but I used High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights for their intensity (which speeds up the normal growth process) as both grow and exposure lights.

If using this type of light, you will have to test for species that can cope with 24/7 constant light.
As I was shooting tungsten rated cine film (3200K), I balanced the visually horrible spectral output of the HPS lamps with a combination of an 80B and a 50M colour-compensating filter pack and then color-graded in post.

I have been messing around with LED's but find the HPS lights tend to 'speed' things along and have a great extended lamp-life. Important if it is a long term mainly un- attended application.

Good shooting.

When I was a kid, I watched Harold Eugene Edgerton demonstrate his arc and strobe photography to slow down stuff that was too fast to perceive and to speed up stuff that was too slow to observe. Most, if not all, of his seminal timelapse work especially of plants growing, was performed with an intervalometer to expose 16mm film and fire an electronic strobe that was powerful enough to overcome the ambient lighting but short enough to not influence the growth cycle.

Curiously, the Edgerton legacy lab at MIT seems to concentrate on high speed projects

http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/