In my long years of taking model photos, the best results I've achieved have been with incandescent bulbs of 150W or more, which I buy at my local photography store of varying color temps. Of course, if you're not looking to imitate a prototype scene (and the accompanying light) and looking for "shadowless", flat lighting, I've recently had excellent results with 5,000K CFL's mounted in cheap reflector fixtures for eBay "product" shots of motive power I was offering for sale.
After the aforementioned post where CRI was 'splained to me (thanks Peteski), now I know why I like the color coming off of photo-incandescents more than off of any fluorescent or LED source I've used and when I'm being hyper-critical.
My advice is to put good photo-incandescents (for the best color) in your cheap reflectors and bounce them off of something to diffuse the light. If you've got room, and something to hold it with, a big reflector of white illustration board over your subject will give you a lot fewer shadows and "confine" the light coming off your cheap fixtures. If space limits the use of the illustration board reflector, use the ceiling if it's close and "white" enough.
You're going to find that the cheap silver reflectors generate hot spots in your photos because of their unscientifically shaped reflector surfaces, especially if you back off a bit. To minimize that, buff the shiny surface with coarse emery paper, coarse steel wool, or coarse 3M pads. Sometimes they have a clear, anodized surface, which makes the buffing more difficult.
The advice to use white paper "reflectors" is good advice to fill in the shadows, but review your results on your camera's screen and move the reflectors to get the results you like the best. I find that too much "fill" looks markedly artificial and my best results are to not attempt to completely eliminate shadows, as they help define the shape of my subject.
If you have Photoshop, the pull-down menu under "image" will allow you to fiddle with shadows and highlights. I use this feature a lot. Several other less expensive photo editing programs have similar tools.
The following advice probably defeats the whole ideal of using "cheap" silver reflectors, but I'm gonna give it anyway since, like me, you are a Nikonian.
For a more complex setup, I sometimes use my SB900 and SB800 with a combination of diffusers such as a Gary Fong (garyfong.com) Light Sphere Universal-Clouds, which fit over the top of both the SB900 and SB800 and are intended to imitate cloudy, flat light. I also use the Gary Fong "Puffer" which is a diffuser that clips on to your hot-shoe and fits in front of your pop-up, on-camera flash. It's a great little accessory, and will virtually eliminate hot-spots and the shadow that longer lenses create when taking close-in photos. Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS) makes using multiple Nikon Speedlights remotely and cordlessly a cinch. If your Nikon body is capable of using its pop-up flash in "commander mode" then that, and your SB800, combined with the Gary Fong "Puffer" (or equivalent diffuser) can give you some great high-key, virtually shadowless shots, with lights that are all exactly the same CRI and color temp.
I also have a couple of Nikon Micro lenses, but I find that for most of my model photography, I am using my DX Nikkor 80-200mm zoom. Its close-focusing and zoom capabilities make composition very fast, and in my limited space in my layout room, I simply cannot back up enough for overall shots with even my 60mm Micro, so the 18-200 gets used most of the time. If you have a "kit" zoom lens, give it a try. You'll be pleased with the results.
Unless I'm shooting for publication in a magazine, which I shoot in NEF (Nikon RAW), I have been cutting the "quality" down to "small, normal" jpg files for quick uploading to Picasa then posting online. The file size is perfectly adequate for viewing on a monitor, and NEF files coming out of my D7000 take up a LOT of disc space, especially if I shoot NEF and jpg simultaneously...which I usually do. In some instances, smaller is better...at least more efficient.
Here's a shot at Echo Curve of a dark subject, with shadows uncorrected using 5,000K CFL's in my layout lighting.
Here's the same shot after messing with the shadows and getting rid of some "airiness" in Photoshop.
Well...time to see if the paint is dry on my GP30 superdetailing project!
