Toronto Photography Meetup Group

For all you studio pro's, in your experience, have you used Continuous lighting at all? Good?

Thinking about it, I figure it would be a lot easier to control especially with a flash meter handy...

I'd love to know your thoughts

I looked into it. Continuous lights are not ideal in photography. They use lots of power and cause the model to squint. Heat is an issue. They make the iris in the models eyes contract.

Lots of little issues.

I'm going to go out on a different limb here. I think there are pros and cons to using continuous light and strobes. Each has a place in photography. While it is cheaper to buy continuous lighting, it isn't always the easiest to work with. First as Dant mentioned, heat is a big issue. In the winter it may be fine but in a studio in the middle of summer it's another story. If you start getting into the 500watt, 1200watt or stronger lighting becomes a hazard as touching these when they've been on for a while can sear the skin off your hands. Then comes the use of modifiers. A lot of modifiers like softboxes etc aren't designed to handle that kind of heat and the ones that do are pricey.

Contrary to Dant's remark about the model's iris contracting, you'd want the model's iris to contract. This way you get to capture the colour of their eyes. Also in some caucasians, they are more prone to getting the red-eye effect and having their iris contracted reduces this.

If you are trying to overpower the sun on a location shoot, you're going to need some serious wattage and a generator to run that beast. With strobes you can get a very portable battery unit like a Vagabond II or similar.

Now while there seems to be a lot of negatives to using continuous light, there are some instances where using them are easier than setting up strobes. For some shoots, my bro-in-law partner or myself, carries a portable video light unit.

Can you tell which shot was taken with continuous light and which with a strobe?

Very good points so far...

I think the second image is a continuous light image

Actually they were both lit by continuous light from a 50watt Lowel video light.

The top image was shot at a friend's night club. We were originally trying to use strobes to light the model but gridding and flagging didn't prevent the bottles in the background from getting washed out. Sure enough we dug out the video light and diffused it with a scrim and used the modeling light from a strobe as fill on the right side. The drawback was that we had to use a slower shutter speed ie tripod.

The bottom pic was shot using a single video light diffused through a scrim.

hmmmm... that has definitely made me rethink a few things

do you prefer one over the other Carlton?

LOL, strobes all the way but don't be too quick to rule out continuous light. There are a folks that use the cheap halogen work amps that go on sale at Canadian Tire or Home Depot. But you need to pay attention to the heat or they could become a fire hazard.

For some wedding and engagement photos, I like using the video light over strobes to get a certain look.

Personally if you plan on shooting people a lot, I'd save up and get strobes. Something simple like an Elinchrom D-Lite kit for starters or AlienBees which are more economical. For a small studio, you won't need a lot of power and 200-250watt is usually more than enough. As your skills improve and your budget gets larger, you can buy more powerful strobes and use the older 200watt units as kicker/hair lights. Lighting doesn't always have to be expensive or elaborate. A basic shoot through umbrella can still work wonders.

If you just want something to fiddle with in the meantime, run out to HomeDepot and pick up a couple work lamps. If you find the lighting too harsh, then start bouncing the light or diffuse it through a white sheet (don't start a fire!) or feather the light.

Just as a tip, chose your brand wisely. Look and see what modifiers are available for it before running out and getting a kit. Does consistency override economical and how serious are you going to get into studio lighting?

I've read those points before in that article (which is a very decent article) but I was wondering about the actual application experience anyone has had.

I've seen newer LED lights and fluorescents that are a lot less heat and operate anywhere from 32k to 58k kelvin, which is why I'm wondering.

hard to answer that question without knowing what kind of application you're going to use the lighting for?

you can light with both types, 2 practical differences are
a)continuous is suited for locations with AC power outlets , so you're restricted to that. with flash/strobes you're mobile.

b)you have full control over the lighting with flashes/strobes, not so much with continuous lighting. lighting is just not throwing light on subjects, you need full control over it.
there are some differences in terms of shutter speeds/ISO and aperture.
for example with strobes the light burst is so short that doesn't affect ambient light (and vice-versa), so you control the exposure with your aperture and ambient light with your shutter speed, with continuous lighting it's a different story

for those 2 reasons I've stayed away from continuous as they don't cater to my needs ( location shooter with different lighting requirements depending on the assignment).

You can easily burn yourself with those hot lights. Heat is an issue too.
You can get portable hot lighting with barn doors and take them on-location. It can produce very unique old style look. Other than that I would really recommend getting strobes for studio work or you'll be upgrading soon.