Some advice on lighting please

[Mart61]

As you may have seen from earlier posts, it's my birthday soon and I want to spend some money on lighting.

Here's my problem:

I quite fancy a basic strobe set up and have been considering buying the Interfit EX150 MkII kit: http://www.interfitphotographic.com/Lighitng/Pop up pages/Pop images/EX150-mk-ii-INT182.gif

However, in truth, I seldom to never get to photograph people so it's more about product-style photography, macro work and shots of things around the house.

My question is this: Should I be looking at the studio starter kit above, or should I consider a more "constant" lighting system?

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Garry Edwards]

Neither.

Constant lighting is fine for Ebay sellers who want to use it in conjunction with light tents, in other words people who aren't into photography and who just want pictures of their products.
But for photogaphers, continuous lighting has a number of major disadvantages. The range of light modifiers is extremely limited - and if you can't shape and control the light you'll never progress beyond 1st base.

And, although some of the fluorescent kits can switch off one or more lights, generally continuous lighting isn't adjustable for power, which makes it pretty useless.

Fluorescent lights have a discontinuous colour spectrum, they're deficient in magenta and although this is 'adjusted' to give apparently daylight colour, it's still pretty poor by comparison to flash, daylight or even tungsten lights. Make sure that the Colour Rendition Index is at least 90, but even with a very high figure don't expect all colours to be reproduced accurately.

Flash. At the risk of being accused of being anti Interfit, you can do much better for very little extra money. A flash head that may be adequate for portraits won't necessarily be adequate for product shots, where colour consistency, power consistency and adequate power are very important. The good thing about Interfit is that some of them use Bowens S fit accessories, but not all models do, and for product photography, you should avoid all lights for which you can't get good accessories.

My advice is to get flash, but to keep your hands in your pockets for now - this is the time of year when manufacturers introduce new models, so it will probably pay you to wait a bit longer.

 

[Mart61]

Garry

Thanks for your insight here. I am a total newbie and know nothing on this score.

When you say I can "do much better for very little extra money", could you give me a few examples please? My budget is limited but if there are better alternatives I'd happily consider them.

 

[Garry Edwards]

The Elinchrom D-Lites are probably your best bet at the moment, but as I said earlier you should hold fire for a week or so, better alternatives are very likely to be announced soon.