Lighting: Flash or Non-Flash

[jimmyd]

I'm supposed to receive my 10d this Friday, assuming UPS is on time. First and foremost, I'm a videographer. And yeah, I'm a photographer as well.

While I've been working with digital video (DV) cameras for years now, this will be my first experience with Digital Photography. I've been doing a lot of reading in the digital photography forums. It seems that one of the things that confuses some photographers is they're thinking "photography" rather than videography.

It seems to me that digital still cameras are, basically, video cameras capturing a single frame of video that mimics film. Knowledge of video, I think, should be most helpful to photographers who've made the transition from film to digital. For instance, with film you didn't really think about color temperature (white balance). You mostly bought daylight film... or if you're a cinematographer, you might also have bought tungsten film. And the kind of film you used--daylight or tungsten--told you what kind of lighting you needed: tungsten or daylight. But with video, you had the ability to white balance to almost any color temperature.

But I'm getting away from what I wanted to ask.

Has anyone shot (I guess I'm mostly wondering about interior shots) using fixed/continuous lighting instead flash lighting, and if so, how were the results?

I assume these digital still cams have some kind of "lux" rating, i.e., minimum lighting needed. And I'm sure that as you approach the minimum lux rating, the pictures tend to get muddy. I understand you can change the ISO which then means (as higher ISOs) you need less light. But then--just like with film--I assume the higher the ISO the grainier, or in this case 'muddier', the picture becomes.

Comments? Enlightenment? Sorry if my post tended to wander....

[hugodrax]

There is no Lux rating, it is a combination of film speed,lens aperture.

IE a iso 800 with a 50 1.8 lens will get you shots that a

800 with a 5.6 lens could not.

The best thing about cameras is the exposure stick needle. Depending on the situation dead center is good enough, sometimes putting it off center (negative) is the way to go etc..

I only shoot with available light. I feel flash contaminates the picture/ambience. I prefer the look of available light it helps capture the moment as nature intended.

I have some examples of available light pictures at

http://www.pbase.com/hugodrax/dragoncon2003

[evilenglishman]

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[Andy_T]

Great, you'll like photography!

Here, you have a *lot* more options to capture low light than with video.

The main reason is that on the videocam, in order to uphold continuous movement, you'd need at least 25 frames per second. This means that you can not set the shutter speed longer than 1/25 of a second.

Now, with photography and using a tripod, you don't have any problems to use shutter speeds of 15 seconds (unless you want to capture moving objects that would get blurred).

So you can use your 50 or 100 ISO setting (that produces less grain in the image and better colours than 1600 or 3200 ISO) in night shots. ISO speed measures how sensitive your CCD sensor (or film, in the old times) is to light. Basically, a film with ISO 400 is 4 times more sensitive to light than a film with ISO 100. So if you need 1/25 s shutter speed at ISO 100, with the same lens and the same light, you can use 1/100 s shutter speed with ISO 400 film. The LUX rating of video cameras (as I understand it) is actually a combination of the ISO sensitiveness of the sensor and the largest aperture of the camera (normally in the range of f/1:1.8 or f/1:2 for consumer grade video cameras). There are Canon lenses with apertures of f/1:1.2 (providing 4 times as much light as f/1:1.8)

Hope that helps you :)

Also, flashes provide much more light than video lamps in the very short timeframe (1/100 - 1/250 s) it takes to fire them. So you can illuminate more with flashes than with video lamps with the same battery capacity. As far as colour change is concerned - I like bouncing the flash off the ceiling for indoor shots as it normally gives more life-like colours while at the same time illuminating the object.

And finally some snobbery on the part of video lenses ... I'm not an expert here, but with Canon L lenses, it's very easy to spend US$ 1,500 on a single lens. And there are a lot of photographers, who consider it worthwile getting some of these. Don't know how the built-in zoom lenses of videocams compare to that...

Regards,
Andy

[Andy_T]

The smiley in 1:1.8) was actually meant to be 1:1.8 ) !

[cowman345]

I primarily use strobes, but in my last session, my synch cord broke and I ended up shooting continuous with a 300 or 500W lamp through a 36" white umbrella with some silver reflectors. Here are the results:


Mandi 04 (http://www.photoblink.com/imageview.asp?imageid=75762&groupby=authorid&value=2753&page=1)

Mandi 06 (http://www.photoblink.com/imageview.asp?imageid=76581&groupby=authorid&value=2753&page=1)

So it can be done... the bigger question is what effect does it have on the model? With brighter continuous lighting, the pupils are stopped down... err... contracted?which may be undesireable. Continuous lighting can also get pretty warm and uncomfortable after awhile for the model.

hope that helps!

-dave-

[jimmyd]

Wow! Thanks for all the GREAT info guys, especially your short discourse Andy! And special thanks for the shots of Mandy, Dave, as well as your link Hugo (Geez, did I thank everone?)--Those examples helped a bunch. My 10d arrived today and I'm really excited; I wish the battery came charged. I keep staring at the blinking red light on the charger thinking, "Enough already!" My 550EX arrives on Monday (according to UPS), but I'll probably take some shots this weekend using whatever available/ambient light that happens to be there.