Continuous Lighting for portraits

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losbandidos

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Anyone shoot with continuous lighting for head shots or portraits?

Just wondered if anyone has any feedback/examples of the results achieved.
 
I'm afraid that examples won't help you - highly skilled people can get outstanding results with whatever equipment they happen to have at hand. Most of us can get good results more easily with better/more suitable equipment and some of us can only get poor results, even with the best tools...

Continuous lighting tends to be popular with beginners because they think it's easier, as well as cheaper, than flash. But in reality it isn't easier because the 'affordable' products have limited (or zero) choice of light shaping tools available to them, and have limited or zero adjustment for power.

And people generally don't like being photographed with them because they appear to be blindingly bright, even though the actual power is just a tiny fraction of the power of studio flash.
 
Thanks for insight Garry. :thumbs:

Guess I should have given more explanation in the OP.

I've recently watched a few training videos in which the photographers preferred continuous light. Bambi Cantrell Creative Live and Peter Hurley Head Shots.

Bambi favoured a continuous light (don't know which one) in a large Octabank and Peter uses thousands of pounds worth of Kino Flo lights.

What I really wanted to know is if anyone uses affordable continuous lights (like the Quadlite) on a day to day basis and is happy with the results they achieved and if they prefer them over a flash system?
 
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Well, there are always going to be people who have strong preferences for certain tools, which doesn't make them either right or wrong.

Lencarta has a lot of customers who've bought into the Quadlites for still photography and apart from one woman who sent it all back because she thought it was too complicated to assemble the softbox, everyone seems to be happy with them, judging from the repeat orders.

I'm a studio photographer, so I'm a control freak - I want every part of the lighting to be under my control, and it's probably because of this - and because I don't care how much I spend on lighting - that I use flash. Different people have different preferences and attach different levels of importance to these things.

There are plenty of people around who just don't get it as far a lighting is concerned. With apologies to 'Animal Farm' these tend to be the people who believe in "Soft light good, hard light bad" and who seem to think that it's all about quantity of light, not quality - so they buy themselves the biggest softboxes they can find, or the cheapest umbrellas, stick them on flimsy stands and blast their subjects with light, totally ignorant of what can be achieved by the careful creation of shadows. For people who don't understand light, or don't think it matters, or who won't spend any time sculpting the light, then it would be a waste of time, effort and money to get a studio flash system that allows fine control - they may as well use hotshoe flashes or fluorescent lights, with the ISO turned up or the aperture opened up.

Some of the products on the Lencarta website were lit with the Quadlight, although most were lit with flash. IMO (and that of Advanced Photographer, who awarded it best in test) it's streets ahead of the competition and I'm perfectly happy to use it with simple still life subjects that don't require fancy light shapers, and if flash wasn't available to me I would use it more.

A week or 2 back I watched a TV programme about David Bailey. I don't think it was all that accurate (I don't remember him being that polite and well spoken in those days:)) but the thing that they did get right is that they showed some of the old and horrible continuous lighting that we had to use back then. Although he was perfectly capable of turning out top quality work with them, Bailey was one of the very first people to move away from the stilted poses and long exposures that a combination of low powered continuous lighting and large format cameras imposed on fashion photographers of that era, and use grainy 35mm film and whatever lighting happened to be available. He moved on.

The Quadlite is streets ahead of the old, hot continuous lighting and if you can live without the choice of light shapers that flash gives you, you can manage. And if you like shooting with the lens wide open (or nearly so) then it may even be better for you - but personally I'll stick to flash:)
 
Given the choice of continuous lighting or studio flash, I would always go for the flash. One problem with continuous is that it is more difficult to use higher speed and usually a wider aperture lens is needed.

When there is a group shoot with sets with flash and sets with continuous, I am always reluctant to use the latter as I know the results will not be as good and there will be more processing needed on the Raw files, but then I'm no expert, just someone who is far more comfortable with lights that I have more control over.
 
I shoot with continuous lighting & a softbox whilst in the studio.
I tend to have the lights turned down as low as possible {this still produces rather bright light} & the softbox wonderfully diffuses the light to give it a softer, natural look. I find it doesn't harden the shadows much like flash bulbs have been known to. As the gentleman above me mentioned, I happen to like using a wider aperture to create a narrower depth of field in my work. It's not essential, it all depends on how your lights are set up. Just experiment with different techniques & ideas, you'll eventually find what works best for you :} Best wishes.
 
Hi Ashley, I just read your post on continuous lighting. I've had a camera for a few years now and I'd like to branch out into portrait. Thanks for your post as it highlights just how diverse the photography world is. I was just about to give up on the idea of continuous lighting till I read your post.....
 
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