Why do you use flash?

JumboBeef

JumboBeef

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OK, a really basic question now.............

I used to work in TV as a Freelance Lighting Cameraman/Director. I used to work with lots of lights, and always carried three Redheads and a Blonde in my kit. I could light my way out of almost any situation.

The results were, IMHO opinion, brill :thumbs: and although lit for TV it was good enough for stills. Now, in stills photography, everyone uses flash. My quesion is, why use flash and not constant lighting? OK, you need mains power for constant lighting but is there any other reason?

By the way, what colour temperature is flash?
 
There are a lot of people who use continuous lighting for photography. A few good things about flash though;

Less power as you said, making it more portable and cheaper to run. And, probably the main ones. Your model isn't cooked or blinded by the continuous light, which would reduce their pupils to pinholes, not the most flattering in general.

Plus more I'm sure.

Flashes are generally around 5400-5700 Kelvins. Though you can get different temps I believe.
 
Portability! Power! and Colour Temperature!

Studio Flash use probably stems from the need to maintain colour balance on daylight films. On camera flash for mobility.

Whilst you are correct that you can use continuous lighting for stills, when using film this would either require the use of tungsten balanced film and/or filters. If you want to balance light sources you would need filters on one of the sources with the associated light loss. With flash which is daylight balanced no such problems arise. The power to weight ratio is also an issue.

The advent of digital cameras and white balance correction has to some extent removed these problems, but people are use to using flash in the whole rather than continuous so that is the norm.
 
Hi!
Personally, I prefer the versatility of speedlights to continuous lighting.
I admit however that continuous lighting has billions of uses and is very much here to stay.

I worked as a lighting operator/rigger for a fair few years in a theatre and did my fair share of lugging and hanging heavy lanterns, just last year when I had no choice but to hire a bunch of 2000w fresnels to do a team portrait, so many aches, pains and misery came hurtling back from the past.

Now I travel as light as possible, I have four flashes and a small light stand bag plus accessories like grips, reflectors and gels etc, I can carry it all on my own (at the moment) and still get around using public transport. There's no cables to gaffer down, It's pretty cheap, I can set up within ten minutes and I get the results that my clients and I are after, quickly and efficiently, but that's me in my predicaments really. Each to their own.

I would like to begin to use gear like profoto or Elinchrom studio flash heads on location. Outdoors too. Hmmm.....:thinking: More power!

Flash colour temp is around 5500-5600 Kelvin

All the best
T.
 
Interesting!

OK, if you were buying from scratch and you wanted to shoot 'people' indoors, what would you use? (and costs.....?) :thinking:

I know my way around redheads and blondes (if you know what I mean :lol: ) but know very little about flash.......
 
Flash is daylight balanced and runs fairly cool, except when modelling bulbs are in use.

Continuous lighting in bygone times were balanced from 2800 to 3400 K and ran very hot. Colour temp used to vary with age too.

In the days before digital, you had to select the proper film, either "T" (Tungsten) type or daylight balanced. Gels then had to be used over the lighting source or CC filters on the camera lens. Could be a lot of hastle to set up etc. Plus the fact no controls over levels of lighting so Lighting ratio had to be set up with ND Gels or moving lights further or nearer to subject

Continuous daylight balanced lighting, that runs quite cool is available nowadays that run very cool but they are quite expensive.

There are many 2/3/4 head strobe kits on the market with all accesories and at a reasonable price,

Try and stick to a known name though, Interfit, Bowens, Elinchrome etc

Hope this helps

Trev
 
Very interesting link!

One question: what is the difference (results-wise) between a shoot through umbrella and a 'bounce' (for want of a different word) umbrella? (The video didn't tell me, or I missed it).
 
Shoot through is transluscent, bounce will usually be opaque. You can bounce from a transluscent umbrella but you will get light going through it and my affect your end result!
 
turbotoes said:
Tomas- thanks for that linky, most informative.

Tara
Click to expand...

No problem ;)


JumboBeef said:
Very interesting link!

One question: what is the difference (results-wise) between a shoot through umbrella and a 'bounce' (for want of a different word) umbrella? (The video didn't tell me, or I missed it).
Click to expand...

Shoot through umbrella's allow a soft diffused glow where as a reflector umbrella will reflect and disperse the hard light.
 
Why use flash?

Portability mainly as, like you said, you don't have to plugged into the mains. Also, continuous lights are hot. Try overpowering the sun with continuous lighting and you'll be using up one heck of a lot of power and chucking out a lot of heat. Also the squinting in continuous bright lighting would be a problem.

I also love the way you can set up a flash and without changing the power of the flash you can control the ambient and flash levels independently just using the shutter speed and aperture. You can't do that with continuous lighting as you'd need to change the power output of the lighting.
 
Apart from everything stated above, hot continuous lighting can make the room uncomfortably warm and your model even more uncomfortable, from the heat. The constant bright light will also cause pupils to shrink, which is less appealing than wide pupils.

Relative to flash, even a few KW of continuous lighting is quite weak, requiring longer exposures and the higher risk of blur. Think about a 200Ws strobe, delivering its power in perhaps 1/1000 of a second. That's equivalent to 200KW, albeit for a very short duration. It's better, surely, to capture your image with 1/1000 second of light (even within an exposure duration of 1/125 or 1/250) than to have an extended shutter time (or lighting time) through those weedy hotlights.

When you add in burn risk, running costs (you have to add the cost of air conditioning if you're throwing a few KW of continuous heating power into a room), limited portability, weight, trailing cables and whatever else I've not thought of, why would you want continuous lighting for any use other than video?
 
With videography and cinematography, you have no choice but to use continuous (hot-lights) lighting.

However with still photography, you have a choice - continuous and flash.

I opt for flash both for studio use and location use.

There are several reasons but the primary is the heat generated by continuous lights - especially if you need to use a relatively high shutter speed and/or a smaller aperture.

Shutter speed is of no great consequence in motion picture or video photography since the average shutter speed used is around 1/60 second. A photographer often needs higher than 1/60 second shutter speeds in still photography and that means pumping in more light (more heat).

When using flash in the studio, shutter speed is of no consequence since the duration of the flash will stop any camera/subject movement.

Additionally, using lightweight flash units on location, a photographer can get quite a bit of light from a package that is really lightweight such as using one Canon 580EX as the master ant two 430EX units as slaves.
 
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