What Is Continuous Lighting – And Why Use It For Photography?

When you move indoors to take portraits, photographs of products, or any other item you may be thinking about lighting, chances are you’ll need more light to properly expose the image.

Most cameras come with an on-board or built in flash that will add more light to any indoor scene. However, they can be difficult to manage. Built-in camera flashes are weak and will not properly expose anything more than a few feet away. And, when you move in close to your subject a flash can create a harsh look and deep shadow.

To control the indoor shot photographers have long turned to two forms of supplemental lighting. They are: always on lights (continuous) or strobes (flashes that are closely controlled). This article is about the first form of light: Continuous.

Simply put Continuous Lighting is a light that stays on during the whole photo session. It can be manipulated to various light intensities and can be moved around easily to get the desired effect the photographer is looking for. They have a bulb (or bulbs) that is turned off and on. They sit on to of the lightstand (or tripod) via an adapter or fixture designed to hold the bulb and an umbrella.

Using Continuous Lights have a few advantages and a few drawbacks as well.

The advantages: They are inexpensive, making them a great entry point for anyone on a shoestring budget. They are lightweight and easily portable. You can see exactly what you are going to get in terms of light and shadows.

The disadvantages: Many of the older style units require bulbs that are very hot to work under. To get the proper color balance required expensive bulbs that had very short working lives, just a few hours in most cases. Often times the bulbs take several minutes to warm up to the correct color temperature.

Now, however, there are units designed to use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFL’s). These units use less electricity, and are much cooler to work under. The CFL’s are fairly inexpensive compared to their older tungsten counterparts. The CFL’s come in several daylight balanced temperatures, so the photographer can control how warm or cool they want the scene to be and CFL’s last for thousands of hours.

Continuous lighting can be used with many light modifiers. Using them with the lights can control the direction and intensity of the light falling on the subject. The light units make perfect companions to softboxes, reflectors, barndoors, gels, filters and more.

Most professional photographers will tell you the only way to go is expensive strobe lighting. Save yourself some money! You can produce professional results using Continuous Lights. With the advances in technology and the use of CFL’s you can achieve the same professional results and have enough money left over to buy some of those other neat photography gadgets.

Cindy Shebley
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