 Shino D. Elliott |
Cool Continuous Lights I was looking at studio lights on Amazon and I saw that they have a white fluorescent continuous light. It is supposed to be like natural light but cool so they can be on all the time without baking your subject. Does anyone know anything about them? Do they work? Thank you. Shino
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- Gregory LaGrange Contact Gregory LaGrange Gregory LaGrange's Gallery |
Fluorescent lights are cooler - temperature-wise - than incandescent. They use less energy for a given brightness, and incandescent lights produce light by sending current through a wire causing it to get hot and glow. So less heat is generated with fluoros. But regular fluorescent lights aren't like natural light when it comes to color temperature. You would need lights that are daylight balanced to match natural light. Otherwise you have to do your white balance to avoid the green tint that comes with fluorescent lights.
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- Erica Murphy Contact Erica Murphy Erica Murphy's Gallery |
I use daylight-balanced Westcott Spyderlites sometimes. They do heat up if you leave them on for a while, and the bulbs are expensive. The light and the color are beautiful with these lights. The drawback is they're not as powerful as strobes. You have to use higher ISOs and slower shutter speeds. If you have subjects that tend to do a lot of moving, I wouldn't recommend them. They're also difficult with groups. They just don't have enough power to cover a group and much harder to get the settings you would with strobes. When I use strobes, every picture is sharp. With continuous lights, I get some soft images.
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John H. Siskin |
Hi Shino, There are a couple of things I don’t like about fluorescent lights. First, it is very difficult to change the power of a light. Most monolight strobes vary the output over a 5-stop range and they vary continuously. Second, as Erica mentions they are not very powerful. I saw a fluorescent soft box advertised as allowing you to shoot at f2.8, 1/30th of a second and ISO 200. That is, just not enough. Another problem, as they age, the lights do not maintain color all that well. Here’s a link to an article about the kinds of light used for photography: www.betterphoto.com/article.php?id=195. Strobes require learning to pre-visualize light, but they give you fabulous control. Thanks...
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Shino D. Elliott |
Thank you all so much for your responses. I will keep my money and not invest in fluorescents and, I think, go with strobes. Shino
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