Studio lights?

[Hertz van Rental]

Tungsten is usually quartz-iodide (halogen) bulb these days.
Pretty near to daylight in colour temperature and you can do a lot of the things you do with flash. Lots of accesories.
Advantages: relatively cheap, you can see exactly what the light is doing and you can use them to 'paint' with light. You can also focus them like a spot - within limits. Very portable. Used for lighting film sets and in TV studios but are equaly useful for still photography. Easy to put gels over. Apart from the bulb there is nothing to go wrong.
Disadvantages: they run realy hot. You can literally fry eggs on them. Will help to keep the studio warm in Winter, though.

Redheads - orange coloured heads approx 500W
Blondes - yellow 1kW
Brunettes - blue 2kW

http://www.photonbeard.com/
for some idea of what is available.
There are other manufacturers and if you shop around you can get a good price - second hand too.

 

[FuddyDuddy]

Hello


If you do go for tungsten lights, remember that you need to turn them off and let them cool a little before moving them around. The same goes for the modelling lights on a flash unit, especially if you don't carry spares.

Of course, one of the greatest disadvantages with continuous lighting is that it can't freeze action like a flash can. But then, you may not need that!


F. Duddy

 

[jstuedle]

I have a couple of Alien Bees, the are OK, actualy pretty good for the price. But I just bought two Westcott Spiderlites. I love these lights. They are a light head that can be filled with either 5 halogen bulbs, or 5 23 watt 5000K florescent bulbs. I chose the latter, I shoot a lot of critter portraits, and the strobes startle the critters, and the halogen bulbs are too hot and cook the skin if you aren't careful. The nice thing about these lights, you can see where your shadows are and what the image will look like. I bought mine from B&H, $279 ea. plus $90 for 5 bulbs. Close to your budget.

 

[ajmall]

come to think of it, i used some bowens tungstens on a photoshoot when i was an assistant recently! thanks for the advice - very helpful.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Of course, one of the greatest disadvantages with continuous lighting is that it can't freeze action like a flash can.

Tungsten can kick out enough light to allow you to use a really fast shutter speed which will freeze any action just as effectively as flash*.
This also allows you to use a range of shutter/aperture combinations. A lot of cameras are tied to the sync shutter speed with flash which can restrict your choice of aperture.
There is also no recycle time with tungsten so using a motor drive to capture a sequence becomes much easier as well.

*Because of the power output, studio flash units have a much longer 'burn' duration than you would imagine so at full power it is still possible to get blur with fast movements.




Actually, thinking about it there is very little difference between flash and tungsten. More accurately, there is very little you can do with flash that you can't do just as well with tungsten - and the latter can do a few things that flash can't.
In some ways flash has become the "lazy photographer's" lighting. Put a brolly or soft box on a flash and you can't really go far wrong. And light position isn't too critical either.
With tungsten you have to know what you are doing and trying to achieve. Light position is critical. It all takes a lot of time to set up.
But it's worth it. I think we lost something when flash took over.

Check out the work of people like Clarence Sinclair Bull - one of the great portrait photographers. A master of tungsten - flash wasn't really an option then. Virtually impossible to duplicate with flash anyway:
http://www.artcomgroup.com/introduce/500photographer/images/bull.jpg
http://home.hiwaay.net/~oliver/bullgallery.htm
http://www.aprille.org/greta/bull.html

Also look for work by:
Otto Dryer
Eugene Robert Richee
George Hurrell
Don English
and any of the other Hollywood portrait photographers from the 30's, 40's and 50's.
http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/eal/davidsshields/personal/photography.htm