Strobes vs. Continuous Light: Which is Right for You? | Inside Fashion and Beauty with Lindsay Adler
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 พ.ค. 2023
- Today we are going to compare strobes and continuous lights to review the pros, and cons and which one may be right for your photography.
I’ve been shooting strobes for decades but for the longest time, I never even considered continuous lights until the last couple of years. Today’s continuous LED light sources have a lot higher output, cooler lights, more affordability, and tons of modifier options.
Strobes also referred to as flash, fire with a single pulse of light. This flash of light is short but powerful. Strobes can be speedlights, monolights, or something called ‘pack and head systems’.
Continuous lights, also called constant lights, stay on continuously just like the name suggests. For many photographers new to artificial lighting this is a huge benefit because what you see is what you get. With mirrorless cameras and electronic viewfinders, you can see in the back of your camera how your camera settings change the exposure and look of the image.
Strobes: PRO
One of the biggest benefits of strobes is that you get a lot of output for a relatively affordable price. For example, when you shoot a group of people you may need to shoot at F11 or even F16. Strobes give you enough output to do so. If you are shooting in a very bright studio with lots of windows, strobes have enough output to allow you to overpower this window light so it doesn’t affect your exposure. Both of these things would be much harder to achieve with continuous lights.
Strobes fire for only a fraction of a second, often 1/1000 second or even faster depending on the light. This makes it perfect for freezing motion. Moving hair, a jumping subject, or a dancer will all be able to be frozen in place and sharp. Furthermore, you don’t need to worry about camera shake or motion blur unless you have too much ambient light.
This one is kind of a benefit of strobes; there are many different kinds. Beauty dishes, softboxes, umbrellas, etc. I must note that in the past continuous lights had fewer modifiers because they were more like ‘movie lights’ and the fact that they got so hot made it hard to attach modifiers. Now with cool LEDs, there are far more modifiers available. So, strobes have more but now continuous lights are catching up and most have Bowen’s mounts making it easy to mix and match.
Strobes: CONS
One of the biggest downsides of strobes as a content creator is that they cannot be used to light video. Many of my recent commercial shoots and beauty campaigns have required that I shoot stills and motion at the same time or with the same type of light. If video is an important part of what you do or you’d like to venture into video, strobes won’t be a good fit.
If you are new to shooting with strobes, exposure is confusing. Your shutter speed doesn’t affect the strobe exposure if you are under your sync speed and you can’t see the exposure preview in the back of your camera. If you do need some help with this, watch this video to learn more about strobe exposure: • Your Camera Settings i...
Lack of video capabilities and learning exposure are the two major downsides, but there are a couple of other considerations. For example, you’ll need to buy triggers to fire the strobes. Also, sometimes in low light situations, it is hard to turn the lights down dim enough to balance with really low environmental light.
Continuous: PRO
Certain continuous LEDs allow you to change the color temperature. This is referred to as Bi-Color. You can adjust from tungsten to daylight and everything in between. This is great to allow you to balance with other light sources or the color of ambient light in the room. Now, some continuous lights allow you to dial in the exact hue and saturation of the light. No need for gels, plus you can get them precise.
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Photographer: Lindsay Adler @lindsayadler_photo
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I choose both, cinematic look with led lights and a glamour look with flashes 👌
One full power pop of a 200 watt/s strobe light output is the equivalent of a 200 watt Tungsten light for 1 FULL SECOND of exposure. If you want the same amount of exposure at a shorter shutter speed with continuous, you have to double the light output for every time you half the exposure time. That's basically what strobes are doing. They're dumping that full second of 200 watts worth of light onto the subject in a super short period of time. That's why their output is referred to as Watt seconds.
Indeed! Although it's more complicated because of the different efficiencies of the lights in how much of the energy they actually turn into usable light, rather than heat.
Btw you shouldn't really have a / in watt seconds, because it's not a division. One watt second is one watt multiplied by one second, not divided. It's also known as one Joule, or approximately the energy it takes to lift an apple one yard (or one meter).
@@barneylaurance1865 so if we drive at 50 m/hr we take 1 hour to cover the 50 mile distance. So if we output 200 watts of power in 1 second, we have 200 watt/second, don't we?
Well not quite. But I like the velocity analogy, so I will use it in my explanation:
If we drive 50miles/h for one hour, we travel (50miles/h) * 1h or 50 miles.
The reason I like this analogy so much is as follows: While mph is a unit of distance over time, Watt is a unit of Energy over time. So 1W = 1Joule/s
If we now leave a 200W light on for 1s it emits a total energy of (200J/s) * 1s i.e. 200W * 1s i.e. 200ws.
Watts/s (-> J/s^2) however would be the speed at which the light gets brighter over time, like the amount of acceleration of a car.
If i want same result as a 200 watt strobe, from a continuous 200 watt light, i need to expose my photo for 1 sec. That way i’ll be able to achieve same depth of field and noise level. Correct me if im wrong!
Adorama never disasppoints. Production quality and information is so well-done.
One of the best tutors I found online:) everything so informative and concise!
Great summary, Thanks. Strobes are very easy to control pupil size in eyes. Continuous light tends to give small pupils. I sometimes use shutter dragging to use both continuous and strobes in combination, but that's a lot of prep.
Great video as always Lindsay! Just one more thing to be added in my opinion: when working with a model the strobes (even with modelling light on) are typically less difficult to sustain with the eyes compared to continuous lights. The times I had to shoot with continuous lights, I had to power off very often, because the model was inundated continuously by light which was, almost always, at 100% power. Thank you again for all you make Lindsay :)
Top instructor. Hope to see her videos again here this Spring or by summer.
This was a very good breakdown of the pros and cons between the two light sources, at least for me. I 'got it' for maybe the first time. Thanks.
This is amazing! I needed this! Thank you! 😁😁😁
That was a *very* clearly explained and useful video, thank you!
Awesome!!! Great instructor. I will look at the website during the fall. Might need something.
Nicely done, Lindsay.
Exactly what I needed, and explained so well!
So informative! Thank you!
Well done, Lindsay
That was really helpful! Thank you!
Light is light. There is only one and one light : THE LIGHT.
informative lighting based video.
On the 200watt continuous vs 200watt-second strobe: watt-second is a measure of energy, not power. Since as Adler mentioned the strobe might be delivering all its light in just 1/1000 of a second, it's power must be 1000*200 watt, i.e. 200,000 watt. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times more than the continuous light's 200 watt power. Except it's even more than that, because the continuous light's power rating is talking about electrical input, and a lot of that power is still lost as heat not output as light. The strobe's energy rating is referring to the energy in the light output.
But the actual power of the strobe doesn't really matter, since you can't synchronise the camera precisely enough to capture it without mixing in a lot of the darkness it outputs before and after the flash (as it does when it's turned off).
to be clear, I simplify because that explanation while true is wayyy complicated for practical use. :P
but yes, I appreciate your in-depth explanation-- I hope some people find it helpful!
Just what I needed thank you 👍
Very helpful. I have both.
Thx Lindsay 😊😊😊
Thank you great video. 👍🏼👌🏼
One the greatest
Thank you for the great information
I find that people aren't particularly tolerant of continuous lights because it's constantly bright. They can easily tolerate flash bc it's such a brief period, even if you are popping shot after shot back to back.
Lindsay Adler THE GOAT
I come from 25 years of commercial video directing. And I am still experimenting with flash and continuous light so my kit is half and half but still torn. Love this
You sound like me. I have half strobes and half continuous lighting kits lol.
Thanks! Can you mix continuous lights (say two) with one strobe as key light? Can you do mix ups like this?
Fabulous thank you ❤
One ither downside of continuous light i have experienced is blinding the model to get the exposure i want such as the ISO and aperture im custom to shooting at. The slight benefit of this is their pupils are smaller showing more of the eye color compared to a relatively dark studio and a bright flash.
Continuous leds do come in handy when shooting outdoors at night though. Very easy to get a good exposure wven with a 60w led.
Have been mixing tube lights and strobes these days.
1:51 Lindsay referred to leaving a link in the description but I don't see it there 😕
I was a performance last night for musicians and afterwards did some photos for them. I wish I had two LED RGB wands for a super low lighting ambient shoot in the cool looking leather booth w/ drinks etc set up. Would have been cool. Thanks Lindsay. Love your videos.
Hello 👋 how are you?
Thanks, 🙏 so helpful greetings from Israel 🇮🇱
Do you use strobe and continuous light together?
Hi Lindsey, fun fact, if one was able to turn on a 200 watts/sec stobe for a full hour, constantly, that would be equivalent to 720,000 watts/hour 😀 minus the melting of the whole studio, including the model and photographer due to the intense amount of heat that it would produce 😂🤣😂
I much prefer the Sun or artificial continuous lights. I own tungsten, fluorescent, LED and an HMI. But (for stills) flash is very convenient.
I’ve been shooting continuous lately with the Stella Pro CLx10 and Stella Pro Reflex S LED light and I’m happy with the images I get. That said like you mentioned in the video I will use strobe depending on the nature of the shoot. By the way the CLx10 can go up to 10,000 Lumen which is ridiculously bright lol!
I’m a bit concerned what the continues light does with the eyes/pupils of the subject. Strobes capture them open, but I think the continuous light could make them closed, which is a big problem in the portrait photography.
I'm sure you've shot portraits using the sun and a reflector, or even the sun and a strobe. LEDs aren't going to give you the problems the sun hasn't already. I haven't run into any problems here, but I can't say I've really paid pupils much attention (beyond getting highlights where I want them)! Interesting topic.
One thing is that you can ask the model to look at the softbox with a strobe inside but i would never ask the model to look at the continuous light as this is a problem on eyes strain and it dries out the eyes which is never good for anyone one would never ask someone to look into the sun now would they LED has its place but for portraits shots never ever . Try doing this to a group portrait and see if they like it . NOPE NOPE NOPE
@@chosenideahandle problem is with the person looking directly into the light source, not with the indirect lighting. In that case it would be a problem and strobes are better by my understanding.
For e-commerce clothing, I’m having trouble matching the photos to true colors of the garment even after light room adjustment. Right now the photographer uses a daylight flash. Should the photographer do continuous light?
Use a colour checker.
You stated 200watt led is much less power than an 200ws strobe, which is very true. But I can buy a 200ws AD200 for under $300. A Nanlite Forza 150B Bi-Color LED cost over $500 and has no battery. So for people on a budget that do not buy very expensive Profoto, LED is not a good option at all. 150 watt LED is not useful outside the studio unless you have a Nanlight 720b $1900 which is so big and heavy it is sold with a rolling case. A600ws light with built in battery will run all day shoot. Not so with a 720b. Downsides of LED in order is price, short battery life, weight/size, and low power output. For studio, if you can control the light then the less expensive LED options with color work pretty well but still not a strobe.
Good points
In my experience you can spend a lot on both, or a simple daylight fluorescent tube works as a continuous light (for less than $10). I think the point here is that both have their uses, and depending on your situation, its good to be familiar with both. Rental is a good option for that big shoot with the good stuff, provided that you are skilled in using them, and that's where practice with any cheapo lights comes into play
Not a good option does really depend though. If you are photographing headshots indoors, it totally works. Its a balancing act of price/power/output
You can achieve great results just from cheap flash lights it is the person that makes full use with what they got. that makes the photo not the the person that pays top money for equipment @@barryobrien1890
save time skeep 4 mins
Hi, Love your videos and I am very amateur but always pick up hints etc. Please STOP the off camera cut aways where I see you from side on - very off putting losing eye contact. It is a modern trend but why do it?
I love how its edited, but everyone has their own taste. All good! Its about seeing the space in 3 dimensions !
Please STOP telling people how to make videos. The creators don't owe you anything, you don't have to watch them.
"Let's put on noisy background music and have her speak really fast and loud. And top it off with fast cut scenes for one loooong burst of words".