How Studio Lighting Works
The most important difference between a flash attachment built into a camera or riding on the camera’s hot shoe and studio
lighting is possibilities. Flashguns have the obvious advantage of portability, but there is only so much that you can do with
them. In a studio, the only constraint on what you can do with lighting is your budget. A meticulous photographer may use
a dozen or more lights at once, with some focused on only a small element of the scene. But even with a couple of studio
lights, a photographer can create endless light environments.
94 PART 2 HOW DIGITAL CAMERAS CAPTURE IMAGES
A photographer’s studio uses two basic types of lights.
One is the xenon-based flash covered in the preced-
ing illustrations, although in a studio they are most
often calledstrobes. Although it’s not unusual to see
flashguns used as studio lights, strobes usually differ
from the camera-mounted flash by being able to
produce more light. Instead of the internal batteries
and capacitors that generate the light in a flash
attachment, several strobes may be connected to a
power pack, a free-standing electrical component
containing a more powerful transformer/capacitor
combination that draws power from an AC outlet. The
box may also be connected to the camera and have
the circuits to fire all the strobes at the same time.
(Alternatively, the strobes may be made
to fire by radio signals sent from the
camera or in reaction to the
flash of a light connected
directly to the camera.)The other type is continuous lighting that
remains turned on instead of flashing on
momentarily. Studio lighting also uses
incandescent(“hot lights”) and
fluorescentlighting (“cool lights”).
Both are variations of the common house-
hold light bulb. An incandescent bulb
creates light by sending electricity through
a wire that resists the current’s flow.
Because the electrical energy can’t
continue through the wire, it has to
go somewhere, and it does, in the
form of light and heat energy.2
Fluorescent lights work a bit like flashguns. Electricity flows through
argon gas contained in the fluorescent tubes, causing it to ionize
and release electrons. The electrons strike the phosphor coat on the
inside of the tube, imparting energy to the phosphors, which, in turn,
release the energy in the form of light. Both incandescent and fluo-
rescent light differ from their household cousins by being brighter
and more closely attuned to the Kelvin temperature of sunlight.
The capability of digital cameras to perform white balance
adjustments on-the-fly makes it simpler to work with light sources
that don’t have the same color balance as daylight. Both incandes-
cent and fluorescent have the advantage over strobes that they
can be left on continuously, giving the photographer a chance for
modeling, the art of adjusting light to bring out different highlights
and shadows.3
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