Photographers, What Lighting do You Use?
 

I have been shooting with a tungsten setup since I started, but have heard wonderful things about LED, especially since LED lighting supposedly offers the best natural sunlight alternative... I am primarily an indoor photographer.

Are LED's better than say "Flash" lightning, etc. I have heard that flash lighting can be a bit off, since most flash systems are 1/250 a secnd, but most camera's operate in the 1/1000 second range. I know it's all about the ISO, etc with this, but is LED the way to go?

I like umbrellas with strobes. Natural lighting is best if you can get it.

Bowens flash and soft boxes since about 1985.

Why restrict yourself to only one type of lighting? We use flash, tungsten and LED lighting....sometimes all together at the same time. Don't cripple yourself by thinking only one type of light is best. Experiment and use whatever gives you the best results :thumbsup

bright ones!

Are you shooting pictures or video? It makes all the difference in lighting.

For pictures I use Alien Bee's B1600

For video I mainly use Flo Lighting (daylight balance) for best results.

I bought some brighter lowell tota lights, But they really suck being 3200K you can't get good quality with a DSLR. I bought a kit they make to convert it to 5500K which is daylight, but there is a ton of spill. I'm looking into a filter for the camera lense to see if that will fix things, or maybe I'll make a custom softbox to convert the light...

As far as the LED lights, I haven't used them yet, but emailed flo light and asked about them yesterday. They claim they are as good or better than their older daylight balanced lights.

I would suggest these over keno flow http://www.flolight.com/

I've been shooting with Alien Bees strobes and umbrellas for years with amazing success. I wouldn't go any other route, honestly. They're fairly inexpensive and yield amazing results. Oh, and go with a wireless trigger. Cords suck.

For photos... Alien Bees.

black lights

If you're shooting indoors with tungsten, just set your white balance on the camera to "tungsten" and it should balance out just fine. A little tweaking in post and you'll be good to go :thumbsup

I have set it in the camera, I've also white balanced manually. Neither work well.

I used to wonder why so many people had those nasty yellow looking skin tones, But after using the lowell lights, I'm sure for many of them it's just the type of lighting they are using. White balancing does not fix the problem. I'm looking into different ways to be able to use the lowell tota lights and get a good quality out of them. If I figure out something that works well, I'll post here and let everyone know.

For photos i use Elinchrom lighting with soft boxes. (sometimes ts also umbrella, beauty dish, ban doors).

For video i use some light from China that it's like kinoflo, but cheaper , lol.
The problem is that it's super heavy, and i need to call my husband every time, to move this light.
So, i prefer to use natural light when it's possible.

For photos - Studio lighting with umbrellas and a soft box mix. Very smooth lighting and hardly any sharp shadows if you do it right.

The LED's are not so great in my opinion, depending upon the "panels", they can cause weird "dotty" shadows, and I hate that...but that's just my opinion.

For videos - Constant bulb lighting, thru soft boxes...nice and smooth.

stills I use strobes, profoto's 500's w/ umbrellas. with pocket wizards and radio chip in the meter. I shoot at 160th @ F16. 320 iso and the meter at 500 iso. LED be good for video not stills though, I use fluorescents and HMI for video. :2 cents:

agreed:thumbsup


For Pics: Pro Photo Strobes for stills or sometimes I will hard light with Ari HMI's and Kinos.


For Video: HMI's, and Day light, depending on the location.



I got turned on to Ari HMI's and 3 years back and really like what I got in my video and stills.


JustDaveXxx

anyone use the profotos? pricey but great lighting rigs for stills

grease lightning offcourse

I'm using Profoto D1 Air for stills and LEDs (Litepanels) for video.

yeah! those are slick with the built in transmitter/receiver! :thumbsup:thumbsup

Good news for those of you using the lowel tota lights or any other tungsten set up.

I just bought a cc lense filter and it actually does a pretty decent job at fixing the color. It's still not as good as using 5500K lights but after a few in camera adjustments on saturation, contrast and sharpness It does good enough :thumbsup

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004ZCIU/...M3T1_ST1_dp_i1

thank you!

Hey Ed, I'm doing both on a Canon t4i. Stills and Video

thanks for the insight, guy's, so far. I appreciate it.

email me pls: 123 at 456 dot bz

mail sent

nothing... ?

hmm, my icq is 621200102 or [email protected]

got the email, replied. I don't use ICQ

I use anything that gives me what I need but as a general rule I have Dynalites with softboxes. I have also been known to get as many as 40 speedlites out on location to get the desired effect I want.
For video I have several different kinds of lights at the studio but I find my newest love affair with 1x1 LED lights. I wish I had 100 more because these lights are the bomb and I rely on them more and more all the time.

Any light that matches your camera settings, lol seen, too many green and orange photos on the net.. good luck