Stuff Your Boss

One of the most asked questions about taking photos is what kind of lights to buy. For the most part lights can be divided into 2 types. Strobe which are also known as flash units or continuous which are also known as hot lights. Today almost all of the hot lights are no longer hot because high powered fluorescent and even LED bulbs are being used.

Flash units come in all price ranges. Low cost units start around $59.00 and can be a few thousand each. Each have different power ranges and with most the more you pay the better the product is and the more adjustments they have. Most likely you will have to spend at least $200.00 each to get something that can be used for a long time.

I should add that the less expensivewill be mono units and higher cost will be head and pack strobe units. The mono unit is a individual light and power pack packaged inside a case. The other style is a separate light head attached to a power pack using a cable.

Usually when you pass the $200.00 range the lights will work well and both the color of the light and recycle time are acceptable. Higher priced units can be easily adjusted for more or less power. Another feature is being able to use what is called a speed ring to connect the flash attachments, usually a soft box to modify the light output. I personally don’t like umbrellas and would make sure a soft box can be used.

Continuous start very cheap but to get any worth using will be at least $300.00 each plus bulbs. The bulbs will run around $35.00 each for 100 watt fluorescent light bulbs that are kelvin in color.

Strobes are always more powerful than hot lights, at least any that can be carried by hand. For example strobes that are 200 watt seconds (watt seconds not to be confused with continuous watts) should easily allow you to shoot at 100 ISO and at F11 when doing a single portrait. Depending on the modifier even F22 would not be out of the question at full power.

Continuous lights will not allow even close to those settings. Using a fixture with 3-4 large fluorescent bulbs at 100 watts each (have much more output than incandescent 100 watt bulbs, around 3-4 times more) you would need to move the ISO to about 400 to keep a 125 shutter and F5.6 setting. Of course with continuous a slower shutter will allow more light but then you can have movement issues.

This limits the use of continuous to product shots, such as platinum wedding bands, small groups or executive business portraits if you have several lights to use. A lot depends on the style of photography you like to do. Even some product shots require a lower ISO and deeper depth of field than they average continuous light can allow. You can do anything with strobes that can be done with continuous if you understand how to use them and have the correct modifiers.

Even if the strobes are too powerful at the lowest setting you can use additional modifiers to control the light. It takes time to learn all the tricks using strobes but after you do the same style shot a few time it becomes second nature.

Using continuous requires different adjustments and is much closer to shooting with natural light. I have six strobes and 7 continuous light units I use in my studio photo studio. I still will take off the window light cover to allow some sun light in for specific shoots and will even accent the sun light with continuous or strobe light. Just yesterday I wanted a very bright white background for a product shoot for a well known San Antonio air conditioning repair company, so I used 2 strobes on the background but lit the subject with a mix of window light and continuous light from a soft box.

The key to lighting is practice. Learn to see the results you get and modify it a little each time. Soon you will know a default setting to start at for most situations and can modify it easily to fit the conditions or the look you want to have for that photo.