Reader's Comments - Index of - Free

Studio Photography
take your subject out into the open. "Daylight" is a combination of sunlight (around 5500K) and skylight
(approx 9500K), averaging to around 6500K in the summer. Clouds or shade push the color temperature
much bluer, up towards 9000K, though an overall overcast is usually 6000K.]
Hot Lights
Once you know how much light you need, decide whether to go hot or cold. "Hot lights" are tungsten or
Metal Halide Iodide (HMI) lights that burn continuously. The big advantages of hot lights are
● you can always see what you're going to get, even if you mix with ambient light. You don't need
Polaroid tests, fancy meters, and a good imagination.
● you can use hot lights with movie, video, and scanning digital cameras
Not too many still photographers use hot lights, though, because they have the following disadvantages:
● heat. Thousands of watts of heat that make the photographer sweat, the models sweat, and the
props melt.
● tungsten color balance. Kodak makes some nice tungsten color slide film but if you don't like it,
you'll have to filter your lights and lens like crazy to use your favorite color films.
● limited accessories. It is much easier to control a light source that isn't hot enough to light paper
on fire. You can experiment with electronic flash without burning your house down. With hot
lights, you must make sure that your diffusers, soft boxes, umbrellas, etc. can handle the heat.
HMI lights are mercury medium-arc iodide lights that burn at a color temperature of between 5600K and
6000K. They produce about 4X the light of a tungsten bulb with the same wattage because less energy is
wasted as heat. Also, you don't have to waste energy and light filtering to daylight color balance. That
said, if you get yourself a 36,000 watt Ultra Dino, you won't exactly be shivering in the studio. The
smallest HMI lights seem to be about 200 watts.
Cold Lights
http://www.photo.net/studio/primer (3 of 17)7/3/2005 2:18:01 AM