Strobes, Speedlights, or Continuous - what are you using?

[Kustomkarma]

Howdy All,

I haven't posted in awhile due to being super busy with photography, life, my day job, etc. I'm still shooting as much as possible and have been trying to refine my indoor lighting techniques. I have been using old school Norman strobes, but find that I don't always want the yellowish tint that they give photos. More recently, I have been using just the modeling lamps on my strobes and using my little Lumopro flash for fill and to pop the model off of the background. Shooting this way got me thinking about trying out some continuous fluorescent lighting - either with just a reflector or possibly coupled with a soft box. I have been looking at the Linco Flora setups - and like what I see so far ...but before I plop down $300.00 or so I'd like to hear from anyone that's using them. This all brings me to my question: What do you guys and gals prefer for indoor lighting - Strobes, Speedlights, or Continuous? 

[PinUp Vintage Photography]

I  had to chime, since I write books about photographic lighting..and shoot pinup..I do have book coming out in June of the year entitled " 50 Lighting Setups for the Portrait Photographer Volume 2" Amherst Media. I primarily use strobes since I have my models move around a lot and use fans and prefer a high resolution image to begin with before I take it into Photoshop to clean up...you can look at my work at http://www.begleiter.com/#a=0&at=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=100... and you can see a preview of my upcoming book www.50lightingsetups.wordpress.com

I like to control light and recreate a certain era as you will see in my work.

[G&D Studios]

I use 4 alien bees for pinup - backgrounds or hair from the rear and softbox or shoot thru umbrella from the front.  I go strobist at weddings using 2 canon flashes controlled by my 7D.  I use flourescent when I need continuous..which isn't too often.

[Retrodolls Pinup Photography]

I use strobes and hot lights.

[Boudoir Louisville]

I use Alien Bee's in the studio and Nikon SB910's on location.

[Jerry Seeger]

Had I been familiar with strobist.com before I bought my bees, I probably would have gone that route. That said, a couple of good strobes can be your best friend, and bang-for-buck the Alien Bees are pretty solid.

Man, I still have a lot to learn, though. 

Before I got the strobes I was rigging a hodgepodge of continuous light sources, and unless you go fluorescent, be prepared to deal with some heat.

[Boudoir Louisville]

Yeah, I started with Be's, and have recently switched over to a Pocket Wizard Flex system with Nikon flashes. Lots of light output and sharper images since the flash duration is shorter than an Alien Bee.

[Kustomkarma]

Thanks to PL for featuring this post and to everyone that has responded so far. I recently sold all my Normans and am shooting strobist style right now. I will be picking up some Einsteins in the near future.

[Vanity_Dollz(Cha Cha)]

I prefer natural lighting it's easier. I'm learning, the ropes with studio lighting and I use continuous with my flash for fill. It's not always on the mark and sometimes I need to manipulate the settings. I would like to get strobe....

[Edson Carlos]

A few months ago I had a chance to play at the Boudoir Louisville studio to experiment with additional lighting. Because I like my shots a certain way I was quite closed to the option of external lights. With Ryans vault of gear and expertise made available for my experimenting I figured why not. We played into the night with various flashes and he explained why strobes would not be best to achieve my requirements. I'm happy to say that I've "seen the light" and learned that I could still accent/splash a background while achieving my snapshot shadowed look from the primary on board flash.

I did tv studio (hot) lighting as a teen, and in my 20s was lighting director at a massive dc club. Programing moving (motion) lights is pretty and artistic however in a club a flawed sequence would only be noticed by the lighting tech, never by the people dancing, there is no capture of the moment. Photographic lighting is a whole other beast, amazing and most definitely an artform the very instant is recorded and is a large part of the final outcome.

[RL]

Bodacious Betty {★} said:

What about using a gel to color correct your Normans?

 

You might also use the White Balance setting with a sheet of white papaer on a custom setting. I believe most digitals have the option available.

[RL]

My formal training is in stage lighting. It was hard to conver at first. Continues lighting and modeling lights were under powered and this enlarged the pupals of the eye. I still use stage equipment when doing continueous lighting. With digital I love strobes for studio lighting. You can see and adjust lighting after every frame, if you want. I also use incandecent and flourescent for effects. Try mixing natural light with strobe. A bit of a challange, but great results. Study some of the old masters. Dean Collins was, I thought, the best

[photoassassin{★}]

I've used them all, and like how with continuous light you can see where things are going to go exactly without taking exposures when you have lights in weird places. I've recently started playing with led lights...they seem pretty inexpensive, but I haven't done much yet.