# Product photography lighting.



## anldyxp_gd3 (Aug 28, 2009)

Hi guys, I had a question about lighting. To the mods, sorry if this is not the correct section to post this, im still a noob here. So I'm just getting into product photography and experimenting with lighting. I wanted to know what are the advantages of continuous lighting over strobes, and vise versa. My friend tells me not to get continous lighting because it sucks and to stick with strobes, but why does it suck? I would think continuous lighting would be easier to work with since you can immediately see how the light will look on the subject. Instead of firing test shots from strobes and adjusting the power output accordingly. Can someone shed some light on this for me? Thanks for your time!:mrgreen:

*(i'm currently shooting product with tungsten lamps in the studio at school, but I do use SB-600s outside of school.)


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## Derrel (Aug 28, 2009)

Continuous lighting is affordable at the entry level; there are some VERY costly high-end continuous systems. Continuous lighting is often called HOT lighting, and for a good reason; it's hot,and can cause fires, burns,and sweaty models, as well as melting/wilting of delicate subjects like flowers, ice cream,frosting,icings, puddings, various desserts,etc.

Continuous lighting in its cheapest form has very little control over output,and the absolute power of hot lighting is rather low compared with even a medium-sized power pack or monolight. Most better power pack and head systems and virtually all monolight systems allow incremental power adjustment with a reasonable (i.e. acceptable) amount of color temperature variation.

Hot lighting is "on" all the time you are using it. Studio flash modeling lights are on as long as you want them on, and are lower-powered than most hot lights. Hot lighting costs a LOT of money if you need a lot of light output and reasonable exposure times for when you have a person in a photo,and you have to worry about camera movement when shooting with hot lights; strobes will freeze camera movement, and  subject movement. Strobes balance reasonably well with daylight without a lot of filtration of outside light sources,making strobes easier to mix with natural light without the nee to gel every window, or convert the tungsten to daylight when mixing your lights with natural light.


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## anldyxp_gd3 (Aug 28, 2009)

i see i see. Thank you for your help! Yes i was told that models hate "hot lights" so i guess it does depend what you are shooting. Yes certain types of continuous lighting seemed to be alot cheaper than buying another SB-600. But i think i will stick to my small strobes. Thanks again!


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## Don Kondra (Aug 28, 2009)

There is contemporary alternative to "hot" lights and that is continuous fluorescent bulbs.

I used them for over a year before purchasing studio strobes and don't hesitate to recommend them as an affordable option.

Photography Studio Equipment by Alzo Digital

The bulbs are 5500k and you shoot in aperture mode. 

Cheers, Don


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