Camera Lighting

Out of context: Reply #24

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  • joewigdahlphoto0

    I generally agree with sticking with strobes for lighting but there are a few instances where continuous is a good option. Kino-flo lights are daylight color balanced flicker free fluorescent continuous lights that are nice to use when you need a large diffuse light source but don't have the space to set up an extra large bank light or octabank. Kinoflos have a profile of about 6 inches and are light enough to stick to a wall with velcro or suction cups. A chimera bank of the same size has a profile of about 3-3.5 feet and makes it really difficult to use in a small space.

    the other time i would use continous lighting is if i needed to create a really fine, extremely sharp specular highlight on something. Using a small hotlight like a mini mole or a pepper light you can do it much better than you can with any strobe because the light source of those hotlights use a very small point of light created by an electric arc. Because it's so much smaller than any strobe flash light source you can create much higher contrast images- so you can use it for specular highlights that are crisper than strobe or sharper edged shadows than you could do with a strobe in some situations.

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