Home Studio... Continuous Light or Strobe

[lost]

I have been wanting to setup a "small" home studio. I was wondering if I should go with Continuous Light or Strobes. There seems to be a Large price difference in favor of Continuous lights. Does that mean they are crap or what? I have never shot in a studio and have no access to one so I am kind of winging it. Thanks for the help.

[Longwatcher]

From my experience the biggest difference is heat generation. Continuous lights get hot and after a 30-45 minutes in a smaller studio can start over heating faster then you can cool it down.

Strobes don't get nearly as hot, also they require less power overall to use; which becomes important if traveling or setting up on location.

Lastly you usually get a bit more control with strobes then you do with continuous lights, but not always.

Just my experience,

[lost]

Longwatcher, Thanks for the info.

If anyone has experience with low end Continuous Light setup please share your experience. Specifically brand and model. I would love to see pictures produced from these setups also if possible.

The people on the forum are great. You are an invaluable tool to budding photographers.

[cmM]

Before I got strobes I tried with improvised continuous halogen lighting... untill stuff started melting :-P (not joking). At that point came my AlienBees :D
Another thing to consider is the color temperature. While strobes generally give out nice natural white light, the other stuff is usually "yellower" :D, so you have to be a little carefull to avoid color casts, etc...

[lost]

Will custom WB fix the color cast problem?

What was melting? The Lights?

Is this a problem with the Kits sold at B&H for example?

[cmM]

Will custom WB fix the color cast problem? usually,yes

What was melting? The Lights? yup http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif
Is this a problem with the Kits sold at B&H for example?probably not, I was improvising stuff.

[cactusclay]

Alzo 2000 cool lites, built in fan, balanced at 5200 K. Sell it on the Net.com

[vinnyveez]

i am interested in seeing replies to this as i am in a similar position. I am tired of my wife coming home with crappy sears portraits and dont want to pay $400 for the better portraits. So what i would like to do is set up a little studio too. If you were going to buy only a few pieces what would they be? softbox or umbrella ? what other lights would you get? i dont need anything over the top, just a simple setup. this is a site that demonstrates a simple homemade setup http://www.morguefile.com/archive/classroom.php?lesson=7

but i am thinking i amy want to go just one step higher. I might give this a shot though and see how things turn out first before i spend real money.