Using CONTINUOUS LIGHTING - Let's See Your Images

After almost two years of research I've finally decided to venture into the world of continuous tungsten fresnel lighting. Fresnel lights were used to create all those amazing images of the 1940's Hollywood movie stars and black and white Hollywood glamour that had very high contrast, true blacks, gorgeous midtones and transitions that are smooth. This type of lighting has fascinated me for a long time and after doing some experiments I came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to achieve the same look by using strobes.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying it can't be done or that some of the fresnel attachments for strobes wouldn't do the job and I'm not saying you can't achieve the look in post, but there is something very cool and quite amazing about having true WYSIWYG with lights that are powerful enough to give you the flexibility to shoot at whatever settings you like and to have the actual capture represent the vision rather than bringing that vision to life in post.

Unlike continuous fluorescent lighting where you're forced to work at high ISO, low shutter speeds and wide apertures, the tungsten lights give me plenty of light and I can shoot at whatever settings I want. I did some initial testing before my shoot but to play it safe I shot at ISO 400 which is a cakewalk for the D700. I shot with s single 650 Watt light, varied focus between spot and flood, shot on black, shot on white, and was able to shoot at any aperture I wanted without ever being forced to use shutter speeds that were too slow or forced me to use a tripod. One of the images I'm posting was shot at f/4 and 1/1250s and another is f/8 and 1/400s but these are great numbers.

I looked at ARRI and Mole-Richardson and decided I liked the ARRI's even though they're a little more expensive. The Mole-Richardson lights are nice but I wasn't digging the color of the housing and every time I did any research or asked about tungsten fresnel's, the ARRI's came up.

The fresnel's are not really that expensive and a small kit is extremely affordable. Since the fresnel lens is essentially the modifier, you don't need to go out and buy softboxes or all kinds of reflectors and grids. The only modifier I've seen in use or that I have at this time are barn doors and a filter holder that holds scrims or cinegels. Using diffusion defeats the purpose of using the fresnel lens with the exception of some really nice frost or soft diffusion gels. You don't need grids because the light focuses from a 14º spot to a 55º flood with the tun of a knob.

These are the lights.

ARRI 650 Plus: http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …0_Watt_Plus_Tun​gsten.html

ARRI 150: http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …att_Tungsten_Fr​esnel.html

The bulbs, barn doors and filter holders are NOT included.

My kit consists of two ARRI 650 Plus's and one 150. I have barn doors and filter holders for one of the 650's and the 150. I'm really happy with these lights and this is opening up a lot of creative doors for me.

My hope is that this thread will inspire others that are using continuous lights to post images here. We have threads for strobes and flash but no thread dedicated to continuous lighting.

I encourage those using ebay kits, brand name tungsten lights, continuous fluorescent, a 100 Watt light bulb, fresnel's or any type of continuous powered light (that's right, no ambient shots please) to post here and share your work and experiments.

OK, so let me get the ball rolling..............

1/400s @ f/8

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Woo! Finally you've put them up! This should change a lot of our views on continuous lights.

Hang on, I'm going to read the post now. Lol.

You forgot to mention the bit about true freedom and true "wireless triggering", Rob. Lol. No more receivers and transmitters dangling anywhere.

Yay. I'll see if i can break out my continuous lights and cook up something.

Rob....Show off !

can continuous lighting include spot lights from your ceiling, or lamps that can point in certain direction or do they have to be lights set on a light stand and be professional lighting? just wondering because i could have images to post if it is any type of continuous lighting either it be from a flashlight or flood lights which are 3 50W(on my ceiling fan that are able to be twisted and positioned as desired).

seanzky wrote in post #10331771
Woo! Finally you've put them up! This should change a lot of our views on continuous lights.

Hang on, I'm going to read the post now. Lol.

You forgot to mention the bit about true freedom and true "wireless triggering", Rob. Lol. No more receivers and transmitters dangling anywhere.

Hey Sean. Yes, this is another aspect that I love. I never really felt limited by strobes but it is kind of cool to shoot without triggers and with a lot of light and lots of contrast all those lenses that would ordinarily hunt or not play nice with AF points outside the center perform a hell of a lot better.

c2thew wrote in post #10332096
Yay. I'll see if i can break out my continuous lights and cook up something.

Please do. I think a lot of people are shooting with continuous lights of all kinds but perhaps don't feel there is a place for it since just about every thread in the lighting forum has to do with flash.

Alejandro Sandoval wrote in post #10332111
Rob....Show off !

Fun with my new toys Alejandro.

Octowl wrote in post #10332158
can continuous lighting include spot lights from your ceiling, or lamps that can point in certain direction or do they have to be lights set on a light stand and be professional lighting? just wondering because i could have images to post if it is any type of continuous lighting either it be from a flashlight or flood lights which are 3 50W(on my ceiling fan that are able to be twisted and positioned as desired).

It can be any light at all as long as it's powered and continuous. It could be an LED flash light, a table lamp, Home Depot clamp on lamps (which if you've never seen Brian DeMint you've got to check out what he does with standard 100 Watt incandescent light bulbs), ceiling light, modeling lights from strobes, etc.

TMR Design, great shots! Thanks for posting them...

I wish there were more information about fluorescent tube lighting.

I think fluorescents are great continuous lights; they're bright enough if you have fast lenses, they're very cool, and if you buy long tubes you hardly need a diffuser, as the tubes are already so huge and diffuse.

Nobody seems to use fluorescents though.

dave92270 wrote in post #10332315
TMR Design, great shots! Thanks for posting them...

Thanks man. I hope others follow and post too.

hi robert good idea for a thread, i've had a mole light and barn doors for 3 years and never used it. i hated the red colour and painted it flat black it sits on a stand and i use it as a background prop, i might just have to plug it in lol

those results are stunning.

Very interesting post also. I certainly look forward to more posts from you and others herein.

Would you mind posting a link to the kit you purchased?

And I just got the comment above about true wireless freedom, as there's obviously no need for triggering. Duh!! Sometimes I'm a bit dense.

One thing that occurs to me: When you say these are "hot lights" and need air conditioning, can they be used outdoors like strobes with batteries?

Also, if the lights are so powerful, can you achieve very large apertures without ND filters on the lens? If so, how? Can you vary the power of the lights to that great a degree?

And finally, shame on you for not showing the setup shot on these. We need and demand a behind the scenes shot here, sir.

mark

hal-lee wrote in post #10332352
I wish there were more information about fluorescent tube lighting.

I think fluorescents are great continuous lights; they're bright enough if you have fast lenses, they're very cool, and if you buy long tubes you hardly need a diffuser, as the tubes are already so huge and diffuse.

Nobody seems to use fluorescents though.

There are certainly a lot of advancements in fluorescent technology and some nice lights. I had seriously considered getting some Westcott Spiderlites which I like very much and would enjoy using but for me it wasn't so much about having continuous lighting as it was the look and quality of light.

Fluorescent lighting and everything that surrounds it is based soft diffused light. I don't have any trouble creating all kinds of really beautiful soft light with strobes and I'm not looking to get away from strobes. I wanted that look of high contrast, very directional light and even though I feel there are a lot of nuances that make the light different, the one thing that I noticed right away was how the transitions from highlight to diffuse and diffuse to shadow were smooth despite that harder quality of light.

I'm loving the look from these lights and I'm working on some projects where the hair and makeup will be specifically geared towards replicating the old style Hollywood glamour shots.