That question is the same as asking 'Which is better, Nikon or Canon'.
It'll depend on what you're doing, your budget, your willingness to muck around, etc..
Tungsten lights are hot, give you constant light, and if you're dimming them have weird colour temperature shift problems. (Fine for B&W though)
Flashes give constant colour temperature, are cold and don't give you constant light (unless you're using modeling lights in studio stobes)..
I prefer flash, and use a bunch of second hand gear, with home-made umbrellas and soft boxes. I'm getting good results so far (IMHO.. e.g.) and I'm really in the learning stage of the game.
I do have some halogen floods that I've used for still life shots, but I found setting light ratios more fiddly due to colour shift, and I am always worried about the diffusers bursting into flames. I also made up some floods using high efficiency standard light bulbs which are good for still life, and nowhere near as hot. This shot:
was taken with one 6" above the trap.
They give me 400W equivalent light, but it's nowhere near enough for portraits, when you consider a 15year old Vivitar 285 from ebay (I got mine for $40NZ each) will give you enough light to take the paint off a buick at 50 paces.
I'm using a couple of Vivitar 285's a Nikon SB-24 and a Hanmiex 855. They don't have modeling lights like studio gear, so you really have no idea what you're going to get until you take some test shots, but that is a big plus of digital. Studio strobes have a low power tungsten bulb which 'follows' the setting of the flash so you can see the light ratios as you set them.
With tungstens, you can 'see' what you're going to get in terms of shadows and contrast as you set up the photo, as the lights are always on.
If you're doing still-life either is fine, as you can have long exposures required for good depth of field with low light (tungsten will give you less light for your effort..).
For portraits, unless you like photos of people sweating, flash is probably always going to be better.
There are some really good tutorials on studio lighting on the web, do a google on 'studio lighting tutorial' and see what you get.
My 2c worth for the evening.. |
