Continuous Lighting

Hi,
I'm new to DSLR photography and recently purchased a 60D. I want to buy some cheap beginner home studio lights. I came across this site http://www.skaeser.com …TINUOUS-950-WATT-3/Detail in an ealier posting. In your opinion will this product give sufficient lighting for portraits and what would be better soft boxes or umbrellas and how does the quality compare to the cowboy brand on Amazon? I live in South Africa and the prices here are somewhat high with limited variety.

the goose

I doubt it would really cut it, I've used several similar setups and wasn't very impressed. Tungstens, such as the 500W Interfit lights that are roughly the same kind of price kick out far more light though you may have to factor in some gels to balance with daylight if shooting in mixed situations.

I'm a fan of tungstens and am saving for some Dedo lights but most people these days are using strobes.

This set offers two 400 watt equivalent cool lights. That fine for a lot of subjects, but not for portraits. My experience with continuous lighting for portraits was using two big and hot 1000 watt bulbs. Even that wasn't enough (and it was hot, hot, hot).

Get strobes.

Thanks for the feed back. Will have to reconsider my options.

the goose

If I remember right continuous lighting to flash is 4:1 or 5:1. So if your flash is 600ws you need 4 to 5 time that in continuous light = 2400 watt to get the same f/stop and shutter speed as flash. I could be wrong, so if someone can confirm that; it would be great.

I think it truly is a mistake for someone who is trying to LEARN proper lighting, to rely upon speedlights which cannot permit you to immediately SEE what your lights are doing to flatter (or make hideous) a subject.

Speedlights are for portability once you have learned how to position lights. But you can NEVER truly optimize placement of speedlights, only make good educated guesses about their placement, until after you critically review shots on a large monitor (not the dinky LCD on the camera). Speedlight reliance is 'illumination', not 'lighting'.