continuous lights for portrait photos
Dr. J. Smith
I recently bought a Canon Rebel and was looking at setting up a small area
in my shop to do some portrait photography. It gets very hot out there in
the summer so I was wondering about using full spectrum fluorescents. My
searches on the web have been hit and miss and raised more questions than
answers. Does anyone know of any sites/resources I might check out? Any
comments on what I should look for in terms of lumens, Color Rendering
Index, colour temperature etc?
Todd Walker
replytonewsgr...@shaw.ca says...
You are much better off with strobes. For portraits you want to be able
to stop down to at least f/5.6 and even better f/8 or 11 in order to
maximize depth of field and get in your lens' sharpness sweet spot.
Continuous lights just don't put out enough light to be able to do this.
Look at the Alien Bees line of lights at www.alienbees.com -- they are
excellent and affordable.
--
__________________________________
Todd Walker
http://www.toddwalker.net
Canon 10D page:
http://www.toddwalker.net/canon10d
__________________________________
Scroobie
Actually hot lights (continuous sources) are great for digital, and
can be used to create a glamorous "Hollywood Effect" for your
portraits, with quality that is difficult to equal with strobes. It's
generally important that each light source be of a common color temp,
most often 3200K. However, the use of 3200K lamps isn't always
necessary with digital, since color balance can be achieved with
nearly any practical source.
If you want your portraits to have the same "quality" as everyone
else's, by all means use strobes, umbrellas and softboxes. But if
you're after something with a little more nostalgia and class, try
using hot lights. Expect to need up to 5 lamps--key, fill, backlight,
hairlight, maybe another kicker. I use Mole-Richardson units (all
adjustable spots), and have tried to follow the advise of A. Alexander
and his "Star Treatment" video series, a good place to start. I also
use this setup with ChromaKey backgrounds that allow simple keying
methods to substitute various backdrops as needed.
Many don't realize that nearly all the great B&W portraits made of
movie stars in the 30's, 40's and even 50's were made using continuous
light sources, and usually spots at that. With fast lenses to
minimize DOF, you can achieve much of the same look. with the great
advantage of Photoshop to perform touchup and color balance or toning.
Full-spectrum fluorescents are great lights for certain applications
where broad sources are needed; however, it's their broad, flat nature
that puts them in the same category as softboxes and the like.
Some photographers seeking to achieve a Hollywood Look with modern
equipment have installed strobe units inside existing hotlight
enclosures, and such conversions are fairly common. Although they
eliminate the discomfort of tungsten lamps, it may be difficult to
determine in advance how the illumination created by them will be seen
by the camera, since they usually lack modeling lamps.
Crownfield
>
> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 03:47:27 GMT, "Dr. J. Smith"
> <replytonewsgr...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> >This is my 1st post here, so hello.
> >I recently bought a Canon Rebel and was looking at setting up a small area
> >in my shop to do some portrait photography. It gets very hot out there in
> >the summer so I was wondering about using full spectrum fluorescents. My
> >searches on the web have been hit and miss and raised more questions than
> >answers. Does anyone know of any sites/resources I might check out? Any
> >comments on what I should look for in terms of lumens, Color Rendering
> >Index, colour temperature etc?
> >
> >
> Actually hot lights (continuous sources) are great for digital, and
> can be used to create a glamorous "Hollywood Effect" for your
> portraits, with quality that is difficult to equal with strobes. It's
> generally important that each light source be of a common color temp,
> most often 3200K. However, the use of 3200K lamps isn't always
> necessary with digital, since color balance can be achieved with
> nearly any practical source.
>
> If you want your portraits to have the same "quality" as everyone
> else's, by all means use strobes, umbrellas and softboxes. But if
> you're after something with a little more nostalgia and class, try
> using hot lights.
you can do the same thing with the right strobes
as with hot lights, only cooler.
most people just do not get the right lights and accessories.
Wdflannery
>and his "Star Treatment" video series, a good place to start.
I tried to google it up with no luck ... do you have a link ?????