Continuous Cool Fluorescent Photo Lighting, “So easy, it’s Like Cheating”

Photographers have been lighting their subjects with strobes lights (flash) for a long time. Strobe done well produces truly gorgeous images, but it ain’t easy. The light from a strobe lasts a fraction of a second, so predicting the end result is tough for even the experienced photog. Before the advent of digital cameras, which allow you to see the results right away, a lot of guess work was done while shooting with strobes. I’m sure I’m not the only one who can remember a few nervous rides to the lab to see how the film turned out. Having to imagine the final result is not a problem with continuous lighting because what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WISYWIG). Continuous lights also mean you don’t have to have a trigger system to sync the lights with the shutter. Continuous can also be used for film and video production.

The problem with continuous lighting has been the extreme heat they give off. Lighting generally looks best when it is positioned very close to the subject. Many of the beautiful photos you see in magazines were created using lights that were just inches outside the image frame. Can you imagine what it’s like for the subject to be that close to something throwing off enough heat to fry an egg? Yeah, “sucks” came to my mind too, right after “2nd degree burns.” The other problem with the previous generation of continuous lighting was the color temp, which made everything yellow before correction, and quite frankly correcting the color cast was a real hassle. So we used strobes.

A new generation, notice I didn’t say latest generation, of lighting fixtures uses cool burning fluorescent bulbs. Compared to the old bulbs, which use a Tungsten filament, fluorescent bulbs a use a fraction of the power, last 30 times as long, and have a neutral color temp. (The very latest generation of lighting uses LED technology, which is considerably more expensive than fluorescent at the moment). I had been putting off making the transition because, I had lighting that was working, and I wanted to avoid the expense.

Well, I finally jumped in and invested in my 1st Cool-Flo light kit. I can’t believe I waited so long. These things are schweeeet!. I did a couple test shots this morning as you can see from the images in this update. It was very easy to set up and snap these pics, and I barely touched them in post processing. Incidentally, if I was creating these images for a client, I would have used a larger background, which would allow me to move the bike further away from it. That way I could place the lighting further away from the background as well, which would eliminate the circular “glow” on the background created by the lights hitting it. The final result would be a uniformly black background.

The shot below illustrates the 3 light setup up that I used to photograph the bike. Man I still can’t believe how simple this was to shoot.

And finally, below is a shot using just an on camera flash unit. Were are so conditioned to seeing great images in magazines and on television that I think it is helpful for folks to see what photos look like if they are not professionally lit. Yeah, “sucks’ came to mind again. -Jack