From the course: Advanced Photography: Flash
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What's the difference?
- When you walk into a room and flip on a light switch a light bulb, in a fixture somewhere in the room, turns on. That might be an incandescent bulb, a fluorescent bulb, an LED. Whatever it is, we refer to that kind of light as a continuous light source. For still and video lighting, there are many types of continuous light sources that work the same way. You turn them on and they stay on. As a stills photographer you also have the option of flashes and strobes. Technically, all of these flashes and strobes are also continuous lights. They turn on and, after a bit, they turn off. The difference with a flash or strobe over a continuous light is that the bit of time that they're on is extremely short. Because they don't have to stay on for very long, they can be fired with great intensity. To get a continuous light with the equivalent light that you get from a flash, you need a huge light that gobbles up a tremendous amount of power. So flashes and strobes give us enormous quantities…
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