The number one  asked questions about photography is what kind of lights to use. For the most part lights can be divided into 2 types. Strobe which are also known as flash units or continuous which are also known as hot lights. Today most of the hot lights are no longer hot because high powered fluorescent and even LED bulbs are being used. You can divide strobe lights into small on camera flash units seldom used as a main studio light source, independent mono light units and separate head and power pack units. Mono lights will start at very low price points while a good pack unit can be costly.

Strobe lights come in many different price ranges. They  start around $59.00 and can be a few thousand each. All have different power ranges and with most the more you pay the better the product is and the more adjustments they have. Most likely you will need to spend at least $200.00 each to get good quality that can be used for a long time.  This would be for a mono unit which means the power unit and strobe light are together. For an acceptable head and power pack style the starting price would be around $500.00

Usually when you pass the $200.00 range the lights will work well and both the color of the light and recycle time are acceptable. More costly units can be easily adjusted for more or less power. Another needed feature is being able to use what is called a speed ring to connect the light modifiers, usually a soft box to modify the light output. I personally don’t like umbrellas and would make sure a soft box can be used.

Hot lights start very low but to get any worth buying will be at least $300.00 each plus bulbs. The bulbs will run around $35.00 each for 100 watt fluorescent light bulbs that are 5000K in color.

Strobe lights are always more powerful than continuous lights, at least any that can be carried by hand. For example strobes that are 200 WS (watt seconds not to be confused with continuous watts) should easily allow you to shoot at 100 ISO and at F11 when doing a single portrait. Depending on the modifier even F22 would not be out of the question at full power.

Continuous lights will not allow even close to those settings. Using a fixture with 3-4 large fluorescent bulbs at 100 watts each (have much more output than incandescent 100 watt bulbs, around 3-4 times more) you would need to move the ISO to about 400 to keep a 125 shutter and F5.6 setting. Of course with continuous a slower shutter will allow more light but then you can have movement issues.

This limits the use of continuous to product shots, such as platinum wedding bands, small groups or business portraits if you have several lights to use. A lot depends on the style of photography you like to do. Even some product shots require a lower ISO and deeper depth of field than they average continuous light can allow. You can do anything with strobes that can be done with continuous if you understand how to use them and have the correct modifiers.

Even if the strobes are too powerful at the lowest setting you can use additional modifiers to control the light. It takes time to learn all the tricks using strobes but after you do the same style shot a few time it becomes second nature.

Using hot requires different adjustments and is much closer to shooting with natural light. I have 6 strobes and 7 continuous light units I use in my studio photo studio. I still will pull off the window light cover to allow some sun light in for specific shoots and will even accent the sun light with continuous or strobe light. Just yesterday I wanted a very bright white background for product photography for a San Antonio air conditioning repair company, so I used 2 strobes on the background but lit the product with a mix of window light and continuous light from a soft box.

The most important factor to lighting is practice. Learn to see the results you get and modify it a little with every shoot. Soon you will know a default setting to start at for most photo shoots  and can modify it easily to fit the conditions or the look you want to have for that photo.

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