With a rapidly changing media landscape that leans more and more towards video, being efficient as a hybrid creator can make all the difference between creating compelling images that stand out or working on narrowly focused visuals that miss the mark. That’s why it’s important to explore why continuous light in the studio benefits hybrid creators.
There’s little doubt that video has quickly become the main focus for today’s online platforms. Video is overtaking photography as the primary medium for visual storytelling, marketing, and branding.
In today’s competitive media landscape, creatives, marketers, and entrepreneurs must become increasingly proficient as hybrid photo and video shooters. Seamlessly transitioning between photo and video in creative media is becoming increasingly important to stay relevant. One tool that can make that more straightforward to achieve is continuous lighting.
Key benefits of continuous lighting in the studio include versatility, convenience, speed, control, and efficiency. Some scenarios can introduce potential limitations of constant lighting. We will discuss these and suggest ways to mitigate those limitations using alternative hybrid lighting configurations.
Why You Should Use Continuous Light in Your Studio
Convenience
Convenience is a crucial advantage for using continuous light in your studio for hybrid photo/video work. Depending on the level of complexity of a particular shoot, you may need to manage multiple details. These include talent, narrative, creative concept, color, gear, and a whole host of other things. So many moving parts can sometimes lead to an overload of details during a shoot, taking your focus away from the actual creative part of your vision.
Using continuous light in the studio gives you a significant advantage here. You are minimizing your creative overload because it is much simpler and easier to use than flash. Using flash it is harder to envision how things like modifiers, power output, or lighting ratios will affect your final image until you take a shot. Continuous lighting allows you to see all of the nuances of your choices and the final image in real time.
Ease of Use
Having a real-time view of your continuous lighting setup makes it extremely easy to get up and running with lighting. You can arrange your lights, easily adjust power levels, and be able to see your final image within minutes. Suppose you’re just starting with your studio lighting journey. In that case, you can start creating compelling images on the first day of using continuous lighting. In contrast, it may take several weeks to become just as adept with a similar lighting setup using flash.
Learning Curve
Continuous lights have little to no learning curve for quickly creating beautiful multi-point lighting ratios. It only takes a few minutes to set up a three-point continuous lighting setup versus the time it takes to perfect a complex lighting arrangement with a similar setup using flash. With continuous lighting, you don’t need to worry about using a trigger to fire your lights, what groups they need to be in to have separate power ratios, or if they’re all on the same channel for your trigger. You place the lights, set the output, adjust your modifier, and see the results of your changes as you go.
Efficiency
Working in a studio environment naturally lends itself to a need to be efficient. Talent will be arriving, other clients may be booking the space after you, and studio time can be expensive. Clearly making efficiency an essential factor for your productions.
By being quick to set up and easy to use, continuous lighting allows you to spend less time figuring out your creative looks, testing your lighting ratios, configuring your lights, and ultimately wasting your time. Things become even more advantageous when you need to transition between photography and videography in the studio seamlessly.
Capture compelling photos and videos with minimal effort. Switching between stills and video can instantly be done with your lights configured and running continuously. That efficiency level is impossible when you need to set new flash groupings, take test shots, and constantly manage variables when changing your setup.
Versatility
Continuous light provides versatility in the studio for hybrid shooting. Continuous lights offer valuable features like built-in HSI and RGB colors and CCT temperature control to blend in with tungsten or daylight-balanced ambient lighting. Some even provide visual effects that can mimic candlelight and lightning. Some of the latest continuous lights even have pre-configured Lee and Roscoe Gel options, allowing you to match multiple lights precisely to industry-standard color values. These are features not found in strobes or flashes. Continuous lights are available in various form factors, allowing them to fit within smaller spaces or take advantage of advanced light-shaping tools.
Flat-panel designs are easy to use in compact spaces since they are already diffused and don’t require large softboxes for soft lighting. COB-based designs offer features like zoomable light-heads for precisely controlling your light spread and beam angle. Some continuous lights also feature Bowens mounts that can accommodate advanced light shaping projection units with Gobo’s, making them super versatile for creating texture and patterns with your lights, especially since you can see the result of your light projections in real-time.
Mobile App Control
Unlike traditional strobes and flash, most modern continuous lights offer full-featured mobile applications. Group your lights, change their output, turn them on and off, and even set their color temperature and effects with your phone. These handy applications make it easy to dial in creative looks or pre-configure specific light groupings quickly based on what you may be shooting in the studio.
The Continuous Light I Use for My Studio Shoots
I recently had the opportunity to shoot a live musical performance in the studio. I needed to shoot photos and videos to capture my talent’s performance naturally and candidly.
Using constant lighting allowed me to give my talent a comfortable experience, as she could focus on her performance without constantly contending with rapid bursts of light in her eyes from strobes or flashes.
I used a three-light continuous lighting setup that allowed me to easily switch back and forth between photo and video without interrupting my talent while also creating compelling and nuanced motivated light with color and texture.
My choice of lighting included two continuous panel style diffused RGBWW lights and one zoomable RGBWW Bowens mount COB light with a standard reflector. I also had a light projection unit to create texture and light patterns and some haze from a fog machine to give my visuals a cinematic look and feel.
Here is the complete list of gear that I used to create the visuals for my musical performance studio shoot:
- Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Camera
- Sony Alpha a7S III Mirrorless Camera
- Sony ZV-E1 Mirrorless Camera
- Tiffen 82mm Black Pro Mist 1/8 Filter
- Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II Lens
- Sony FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM II Lens
- Sony FE 35mm f/1.4 GM Lens
- Sony FE 50mm f/1.2 GM Lens
- Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM Lens
- Sony ECM-B1M Camera-Mount Digital Shotgun Microphone
- Rode Wireless PRO Wireless Microphone System
- Shure SE215 Sound-Isolating In-Ear Stereo Earphones
- Godox SZ300R RGB Zoomable LED Video Light
- Godox LDX100R RGB LED Light Panel
- Godox VSA-26K Spotlight Attachment Kit for Bowens Mount
- Godox S65T 25.6″ Quick Release Umbrella Softbox
- Nissin LS-55C 6.5′ 5-Section Carbon Fiber Light Stand
- Nissin LS-65C 8.85′ 5-Section Carbon Fiber Light Stand
- CheetahStand C8 – 3 Section Aluminum Light Stand
- Vanguard VEO 3 GO 265HCB Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod
- Vanguard ALTA PRO 2 263AV Aluminum Tripod with Video Head
Some Challenges of Using Continuous Lighting
Freezing Action
Constant lights typically have a lower power output than strobes and flashes. Suppose you’re in a large space and need a lot of power output to light it. In that case, you may need to use more powerful continuous lights. You could also control the ambient light in the space to maximize the power of your continuous lighting setup. Another option would be to use flash and constant light when switching between photo and video.
Although using continuous light in the studio has many advantages for hybrid shooting, it can also present some challenges under certain circumstances.
One example of a situation where using a flash or strobe may be a better fit over continuous lighting is when you’re shooting anything with fast-moving action.
A Hybrid Solution
Suppose you need to freeze action while keeping your ISO and shutter speeds down in low-light situations. In that case, you should consider using a mix of continuous lighting and flash for a balanced hybrid lighting setup that can accommodate both photo and video.
Continuous lights require the use of higher shutter speeds to freeze motion, which necessitates the use of higher ISO values to compensate. Strobes and flashes, however, have the added benefit of freezing motion through the rapid burst of high-powered light. The speed at which the light is flashing is typically much faster than your camera’s shutter speed, resulting in sharper images when shooting fast motion. Your images will also be less noisy if you do not need to increase your ISO to compensate for fast shutter speeds.
You’ll still want to light your scene with continuous lighting for any video work, as that is the primary weak point of most flashes and strobes. They typically have dim modeling lights that are insufficient for good continuous video lighting.
Ultimately, using a mix of continuous lighting and strobes will allow you to have the best of both worlds for video and photo shoots. This combination gives you the ideal configuration for a balanced hybrid light studio setup: Low-noise and sharp photos with your strobes and creative and well-lit videos with your continuous lights.
Conclusion
Using continuous lighting in your studio has many benefits, including real-time visualization of your lighting, a lower learning curve than flash, quick and easy deployment, seamless switching for hybrid photo and video shooting, enhanced creativity with color temperature control and effects, and a more comfortable shooting experience for your talent and clients.
By using continuous lights in your studio setups, you can become more efficient with your time, increase the versatility of your lighting capabilities, and focus more on creating compelling photos and videos instead of losing precious time to technical details, gear, and learning curves.
That’s not to say that flash doesn’t have its clear strengths over continuous lighting in certain situations. However, in a world where we’re all consuming more video-first content, having a compelling continuous lighting setup in your studio is essential.
