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Aputure 300D: amzn.to/3lDQjpx
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In today’s video we’re going to cover why you shouldn’t use continuous lights for portraits
I love my daylight LED Aputure lights, because they allow me to light my videos like a photographer, with the same gear that I use to shoot stills. But don’t let that fool you. That doesn’t mean that I think you should use continuous lights for photography, in fact I think that is a really bad idea.
I get it, often times continuous lights are cheaper than flashes, you don’t have to wait for them to recycle, and what you see is what you get, but there are several reasons why constant lights fall short
And it all kind of revolves around one problem - they aren’t bright enough for professional use. Which leads you to sacrificing one or all three sides of the exposure triangle. To understand more about the exposure triangle I’m going to put a link on the screen up here and you can click on that for more information.
Overcoming available light
Now unless your continuous light is a gigantic power eating monster that you would see on a blockbuster movie set, you are not going to be able to overpower available light outdoors. And even if you did have one of these power hungry monsters at your disposal, your subject would end up squinting like Clint Eastwood because the light would need to be ridiculously bright. So using flash would be a way better choice when shooting in sunlight.
Also in indoor environments you’re going to end up probably mixing light sources and that’s going to create all sorts of color contamination issues, particularly in your shadows. Tungsten lights are going to warm the shadows and God for bid there are CFL‘s because those are going to make your subjects skin look green.
Depth-of-field
One of the things that makes a picture professional is clarity or an overall general sharpness.
While there are sliders for these things in any post processing application, it’s never going to be the same thing as when you capture it in the camera. Using constant light is going to cause you to have to open up your aperture almost all of the way which is going to lead to your images being less sharp and it’s going to lead to less of your images being in focus.
Imagine for a moment using a 100 mm F2.8 lens for a headshot at 2.8. Only the subjects eyes are going to be in focus and as you stop down to say F8, the area that’s in focus will be from their nose to almost to their ear.
Stopping down will allow you to get more images in focus and each individual one will be sharper overall. If you’re shooting an environmental portrait more of your background will be in focus than if you shot wide open and your background is a prime character in your composition when you’re working in that type of environment.
Now I know aesthetically 1.4 is going to give you a cool and interesting scene but if you need to show detail in hair or make up or their jewelry, shooting wide-open isn’t going to cut it.
I’ve had my clients say to me so many times as they were reviewing the images on my computer “wow that is so clear” and if you want that type of reaction you were going to need to use an F stop is in the middle of your f-stop range.
Freezing motion
When your flash fires the light emanates from the flash to in an extreme fraction of a second and that pulse of light freezes movement. So if you want to capture a person jumping or you want a to have a models hair wiping though the are from a Beyonce fan. you are going to need an extremely short flash duration in order to freeze that motion. To learn more about this topic please click on this link.
Now while this may require you to own a more expenses flash or to turn down the flash power, there is no way you’re going to be able to get your shutter speed high enough while using continuous lights in a studio to freeze motion.
High ISO
Another problem with continuous light is noise from from using high ISOs. Maybe the lights are just dim in the first place and then you have to crank up the ISO, or maybe you’re trying to increase your shutter speed to try to try and freeze motion or maybe you’re trying to stop down to get those the earrings in focus. Regardless of the reason, you’re going to have to increase the ISO and that is going to lead to noise and a decrease in image quality.
So if you’re using continuous light in some contexts you can get away with it, but it’s nowhere near as versatile as using flash.
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30 июл 2024
