Strobe vs. Continuous for Portraits

[Sky Blue Iris]

I've been doing a little research before buying a basic studio kit and I'm coming across lots of intense arguments about strobe versus continuous setups for portraits. I'm leaning towards continuous; a lot of the arguments against it complain about the heat and the color temp. but most of the kits I'm looking at have daylight balanced CFLs which eliminate both of those gripes. My only worry about strobes is that I can't tell if the kits come with or have good enough modeling lights and I don't want to work in the dark, as it were.

What do you all prefer?

[candleman]

strobe by a loooong way

1. you cant use a continuous on top of a hill where there is no power source.
unless you feel like dragging a car bettery or three with you.
continuous is not portable

2. both are neutral when it comes to WB.. ....just use it right

3. for location work its harder to gel a contunuous becaus its typically hot..so you melt your improvised gels. to corect for "on location" wb issues caused by fluorescents etc etc
this also makes it harder to snoot/modify because you burn or melt things.
strobes are cool.. i use tissuepaper often.

personlly.... i would suggest steering away from e-bay strobes.
get alien bees, or built up a speedlight strobe kit... hot-shoe style.

the only reason io use the speedlights is because i do allot of location and "out and about" stuff. as well as in-home studio stuff.
so its the most cost effective for me because it does three jobs instead of one

1. off-camera on-location.
2. on camera.
3. home studio

[acedrew]

If you are building an indoor studio kit, Continuous is the way to go, but if you plan on doing a lot of onlocation and outdoor, strobe makes more sense. In the studio continuous lights put people at ease (if they're not uber-hot halogen, I'm thinking more of fluorescent lamps) no blinding flashes of light and you can take pictures as fast as your camera is capable. Also, you can turn off any ambient "odd temperature" lights and use fast lenses for great DOF inside.

I do agree, get either nice speedlights or Alien Bees or better.
If you plan on builiding a continuous kit, look at my post here: Cheap Lighting for portraits??


Andrew Rodgers
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