Your opinions on lighting

[GWestphal]

Strobe or Continuous or Natural? If either, for which purposes?

Continuous: CFL or LED or Halogen?

Strobe: Monolights or Speedlites?

What are some cool lighting effects you've created?

I have basic no name brand set of 4 110W monolights, which I must say work fine for everything I've needed them for. In my experience, most studios aren't much bigger than about 20'x20', so what use is anything much over 300W? Is 300W stuff just for super distant subjects? Do you think a set of 2-3 600EX-RTs could cover the same tasks 2-3 monolights could cover? I've been tempted by the portability of speedlites lately.

 

[virtuamike]

All of the above. Lighting is another tool - what matters is purpose.

 

[blastingcap]

LED for continuous. The power and heat savings alone... the better LED ones don't have green cast or at least not as much of it. But continuous lights do not put out enough light to really help you out in dark rooms for stills.

 

[SecurityTheatre]

Strobes are MUCH more powerful than constant lighting, but are worthless for video, and don't give you the preview that you might want (without modeling light features).

It depends on how much control you want. Strobes can give you ISO-50 f/32 at 1/250. You won't get that from any continuous lighting source.. you won't even get 1/8 that from a continuous lighting source. A model couldn't sit in front of that, even if it wasn't hot, it would be blinding and VERY uncomfortable.

But if you're OK shooting at f/5.6 and using ISO-200, any continuous lighting setup will probably do. Obviously, as it was said, LED is best for low-heat and lower power, but it may cost a bit more.

Your monolights will probably do just fine, as long as they have modeling lights for previewing the lighting.

Also, the higher power might be useful for really stopping down the camera, or for doing bigger subjects like cars, etc. The huge softboxes used for commercial automobile photography, for example, take a ton of power. Also, lighting things like basketball games in a gym take a lot of power, but in a small studio with good control over the elements, what you have is just fine.

 

[Silenus]

Intended use and subjects your shooting have to be stated before any suggestions can be made. For still photography there is no reason to go continuous, flash has a lot of benefits. Depending on how and where they need to be used can determine whether speedlight or studio strobes will be better. What may in fact be more important are the lighting modifers you need/want.