Hot lights

[Rihx]

Hi there,

I've been looking around the web for decent information on using hot lights for photography. There isn't a lot of talk about them as most people use flash/strobes. The flash lovers have good reason for this, but its not what Im trying to find. ( There are a tone of flash vs hotlight threads out there )

I check DPS every day for new tutorials and good forum posts so not finding what I want out there I decided to ask here. =D And this is directed just at people who primarily use hot lights!

Do you have any prefered setups / lighting arrangements? What is it you like about them? Do you have any hot light only images online to share with the rest of us? and finally, can you tell the difference between a photo taken with hot lights vs flash?

Thanks =D

[Murtasma]

This image was taken with a single hot light with a 10 inch reflector


This was shot with the same hot light as well but with a 10 inch reflector and umbrella.


Lighting Arrangements - Same as flashes there are all sorts of lighting arrangements. Problem is the hot lights are very hot so getting a light very close to someone so the light wraps around the face will be more uncomfortable for a model. They are also physically larger so getting them into tight spaces is harder. Gels are not very easy to use with hot lights because of the size and heat.

What do I like - They are cheep that's the only thing I like everything else about there is terrible. Using Gels to color light produced by hot lights is much more difficult because of the heat.

Tell the difference - Yes and no. For portraits it's pretty easy to tell. The lights don't create that much light at least to the camera. They appear very bright in real life. You will struggle to keep fast shutter speeds with hot lights which is important when taking pictures of people because people tend not to stay very still so you will get slightly blury images or really blurry depending on how high your crank your ISO. For still life it will be harder to tell since you will be using a tripod and nothing will move. With proper white balance and light modification you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.


I suggest you invent in a strobe setup instead of hot lights.Hotlights work well for still life like the chess board but for people not so much. The picture of the girl may appear sharp here when viewed at medium sized but when you view at 100% the image is not sharp because the shutter speed was not sufficient to stop the small movement produced by the model and or camera slightly moving.

A flash setup will be much more versatile. You can get the flashes in tighter areas then hot lights since they are physically smaller. They also last longer the hot lights in the sense that you will need to buy new bulbs for the hot lights pretty often if you regularly move them. You can't really color the light of a hot light as easy as a flash. You can also remotely trigger flashes and do 2nd curtain sync which is not possible with hot lights.

Hope this helps!

[ttosifa]

I mostly agree with Murtasma regarding the convenience of strobes over hotlights. However, you seem fully committed to hot lights, so...

As far as telling the difference between strobes and hotlights, I would think it might be difficult for pictures that are done well. As far as set ups go, they would be the same.

For examples of hot-light-only pictures, check out the simply amazing work by George Hurrell, who defined the Hollywood Glamour look in the 30's-50's. I have a book my Mark Vieira called "Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits" that describes some of his lighting techniques and shows some shots of his set ups. Amazing stuff.

And, TV shows and movies are all shot using hot lights, so pick your favorite show and use freeze frame to study the lighting!

[Murtasma]

This image was lit using a flash with a colored gel. As you can see from the medium size it's already apparently sharper then the one with the hot lights because I was able to use a faster shutter speed.



Here is an image that would not be possible to recreate using hot lights at least with out taking several hundred images and hoping the dog is standing perfectly still during the exposer. When using flash this allows me to stop my lens down more to place more of the eye within the depth of field while still maintaining a shutter speed in excess of 160th of a second because I was working at 100mm here.



This image was lit in a soft box with two 500 watt hot lights. I had to set my ISO to 800 so I could ensure a very fast shutter speed to freeze the movements of a kitten that was moving around a lot. This would be possible with a flash as well but I would lose a lot of output from the flash because I would have to operate using the high-sync speed which reduces the flashes output. With the hot lights you don't run into this high-speed sync issues. So there are some benefits when working with hot lights.



This image was lit using 2 500 watt hot lights and ambient light coming through a large window at camera right. This image was shoot at F2.8 ISO 100. It is possible to obtain good shutter speeds with hot lights but without the ambient light from the window I would have probably had to shoot this image at a higher ISO resulting in more noise. I also had the camera on a tripod and told my sister to sit perfectly still. The shutter speed was 1/50th of a second approach the zone of a shutter speed that I feel is too long.

[Murtasma]

This is an image of me I took myself using a timer and tripod. Lit by two 500 watt hot lights with umbrellas and a 250watt 6inch reflector dish above my head as a rim light. The EXIF for this image is

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/7.1
Focal Length: 22 mm
ISO Speed: 400

It was very hot working with that many hot lights on and the shutter speed is approaching a speed that is too long for my tastes. I had to shoot at 400 ISO which worked in this image but working with a flash I would be able to reduce my ISO if I felt the image needed less noise. It would also have been much less hot so I would have tried more then 1 - 3 attempts like I did here.

[ttosifa]

Here is one of my favorite Hurrell photos.

http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/u...hdj5kgds_b.jpg

Unfortunately, I cannot find my all-time favorite on the web.

[Rihx]

Thanks everyone, those are all some excellent shots and good information.

ttosifa -> I'm not committed to hot lights, I like my flash. However, I haven't used hot lights and have found that there is a horrible lack of information on them out there.

[rpcrowe]

Yes there is a lack of information regarding hotlights. However if you can find some old (very old) photo books, there will be a plethora of information regarding the use of hotlights.

IMO, there is absolutely no reason to use hotlights and lots of reasons not to use them. An inexpensive set of eBay studio type strobes will do a better job in most situations than hot lights.

The only pro that you can say about hotlights is that you can see your lighting. Well, if you use a studio type strobe with a modeling light, you can see what your lights are doing and be able to adjust them.

The two big things I have against hot lights (besides the heat, of course) is that you have problems using light modifiers because some will burn up. Also, although the lights are not really bright for photo purposes and require relatively slow shutter speeds, they are bright when shining into a subject's eyes. The brightness of these lights cause the pupils to contract into pin-points. This is not flattering for anyone but, particularly not flattering when shooting females.