What's the difference between STROBES and STEADY LIGHTS?

[rateeg]

im planning to purchase light but dont know what to get.
i do want to venture on fashion photography and studio.

whats the difference between strobes and steady lights?


and for the strobes, how do you mix the settings of your camera if it's dark on the room and you see the only ambient light on the viewfinder?

 

[DiskoJoe]

storbes are flash. steady lights are just lamps.

 

[PhotoWrangler]

and for the strobes, how do you mix the settings of your camera if it's dark on the room and you see the only ambient light on the viewfinder?

One flashes, one doesn't. And if you can't answer the question above, then you probably aren't ready to buy one. Save your money and learn what you're doing first.

 

[Big Mike]

Strobes (Flash) is a very short burst of light and 'steady' lights (usually called 'continuous') are obviously lights that give you light continuously, not in a burst.

In terms of photography, they are very different...and yet, in the end, light is light.

The pros for using continuous lighting is that it's usually cheaper to buy and 'what you see, is what you get'. This makes it easy to learn and use.
On the down side, continuous lighting usually isn't very powerful, in terms of how much light you need for photography...unless you use really powerful lights, but then you have to deal with heat, which isn't comfortable for the model or you.
The specific problem with continuous lighting, is that it's dependent on the shutter speed for exposure, just like photo you are shooting with ambient light. So because continuous lights don't put out a whole lot of light, you'll probably end up having to use a slower shutter speed, and/or a very large aperture and/or a high ISO. If you can't get a fast shutter speed, you will get blurry photos from either camera shake or subject movement.

Strobes are usually the lights of choice for photographers who shoot people. The main reason is because the burst of light can be very powerful and very short. Because of that, the shutter speed isn't really a factor in the exposure from the strobes. That means that the flash will freeze any movement and give you nice sharp shots.
The down side to using strobes, as you may already know, is that the camera's meter can't measure them. So when using strobes, you will most likely need to put your camera into manual exposure mode, and then find another way to set your exposure properly. The best tool is a hand held flash meter, but because this is digital, you could probably get away with trial and error. After a while, you may get to the point where it's 2nd nature and you can set your exposure, relying on your experience, but even then, it's very handy to have a flash meter to set specific lighting ratios etc.
Also, because the strobe burst is so fast, you won't see the results until you actually take the photo. So it's a little harder to learn than continuous lighting, but the benefits far outweigh that.

 

[rateeg]

thanks guys for the inputs. im now starting to understand.

 

[480sparky68 67]

im planning to purchase light but dont know what to get.
i do want to venture on fashion photography and studio.

"Steady" lights if you're poor and want to struggle with the heat and inconsistent color temperatures. Strobes if you want to produce consistent results. Most pros shoot strobes for a variety of reasons.

whats the difference between strobes and steady lights?

Strobes are like the flash on your camera. It produces a very bright, short flash of light. "Steady" lights typically use high-wattage incandescent (sometimes fluorescent) lamps like what you have in the lights around your home. The drawbacks to 'steady' lights are numerous In order to produce enough light for photographic purposes, they are usually high wattage (400 watts is a minimum). This brings along an entire host of issues..... heat, easy to burn out, expensive, and they tend to change color temperature as well as lumens produced as they age. One advantage is.... you don't need to worry about shutter synch speed.

Strobes, on the other hand, use a small modelling lamp to mimic the light that the flash will produce so you can see the lighting effect before clicking the shutter. The strobes will fire (assuming you've got a system set up between the camera & strobes to trigger them at the right time, but that's easy to accomplish), producing a large amount of light the same time the shutter is open (again, assuming you've got a proper 'synched' shutter speed). Strobes don't crank out the heat like incandescents do, and have a more even temperature color and lumen output over their lifetimes.

Another advantage to strobes is the extremely short duration. Instead of using the shutter to keep the subject & camera movement in check, the short duration of the strobe does that for you. Strobe durations are usually milliseconds range. Shooting with strobes that fire at 1/1000 sec is a lot easier than pouring enough 'steady' lighting on the scene in order to get the camera shutter speed up to 1/1000.

The downside to that 'speed' issue is..... you can adjust the shutter speed using 'steady' lights to adjust your exposure. Not so with strobes. Even though the strobes may fire at 1/1000 sec, if you're shooting in a darkened room, you can only adjust your aperture and ISO to change exposure. The camera's shutter speed is usually set to the highest 'synched' speed allowed. Lowering it will not affect exposure, raising it will cause dark areas to appear on the image.

One other thing strobes have going for them. Most have a dial on the heads that will allow you to adjust the light output of the flash. This allows you to have some control over aperture you need to set the lens at to produce the desired DOF and exposure. You may think shooting at f/22 is great, but the lens may not perform best at that aperture, or you may have too much DOF and want to minimize it. If you're ISO is at the camera's minimum, you can then 'dial down' the strobes so they don't put out as much light. This will allow you to open the aperture up to f/11 or f/8, where the lens will produce a better image. Better strobe units will have strobes/modeling lights that are dialed down at the same time.... when you turn the knob, you not only adjust the light output of the the strobe, but the modeling light dims as well, so you can see the result without taking the shot.

and for the strobes, how do you mix the settings of your camera if it's dark on the room and you see the only ambient light on the viewfinder?

Mixing ambient and strobes can be done, it just takes practice. At a professional level, ambient light should be eliminated as much as possible..... this gives you total control over the lighting by having just the strobes light the subject. Mixing ambient and strobe lighting can produce an image with odd colors. Usually, ambient lighting is incandescent (yellowish) or indirect daylight (bluish).

If you want to start mixing strobe & ambient, a quality light meter would be highly recommended. One that can meter not only the ambient light (which most low-$ do anyway), but can meter strobes as well (this feature will cost you more!).

If you really want to start mixing ambient and strobes, you may want to mortgage your home and buy a color temperature meter. This will allow you to easily measure the color temperature (measured in Kelvins [°K]) so you know how to adjust your white balance prior to shooting.

As for 'mixing' the settings on your camera, you'll usually need to pick just ONE setting. One that will allow the ambient light to be recorded on the film/sensor, yet keep the strobes from washing out the scene. A tricky method, and one that takes lots of time to set up. Fine for product photography, but shooting a live model.........it's really gonna take some doing! Mixing ambient and strobes when you're shooting static subjects is a lot easier since you can keep everything from moving.

My suggestion for fashion is for forget 'steady' lights.... there's a reason truckers buy Kenworths and Peterbilts and not Vokswagens and Kias.

 

[rateeg]

thanks sparky. that was informative

 

[Destin]

thanks sparky. that was informative

Just to build upon what sparky said:

You asked how you set your camera up when the room is dark and you can't see through the viewfinder. Well, eliminating ambient light does NOT mean the room as to be dark. Leave the lights in the room on so you can see what you're doing, and then just use camera settings to eliminate ambient. With typical indoor lighting f/8, iso 100, and 1/200th of a second is going to give you a black photo. No ambient light is being recorded here. Now just add in flash to light the photo. The flash will affect the exposure because it's much brighter than the ambient. This means you can eliminate the ambient light, without shutting the lights off.