- Tangents

Continuous lighting for studio portraits

New in the studio – these white posing blocks. I know I am late to the game on these, but maaaan, do I love the look of these portraits. This time I decided to use continuous lighting for this photo session. The obvious advantage is that you immediately see the results with any adjustments you make to the lighting. Another advantage of using continuous lights in the studio, is that you can shoot at any tempo without having to consider the recycle time of a flash. There is a disadvantage though in that these lights have less power than studio flashes. So you need to work at a higher ISO and / or wider aperture.

These white posing blocks are from Denny Manufacturing. They are kinda spend, but I couldn’t be bothered making these in my basement.

I lit these portraits with two Amaran 300c LED lights, and Profoto softboxes. I bought Newell mounting adapters (B&H), so that the Bowens mount lights can take any of the numerous Profoto light modifiers in my studio. Scroll down for the behind the scenes / pull-back shot that will show how the lights were placed.

The background is obviously white paper backdrop, but I didn’t specifically light the background. It was just the spill light from the main light, which then means the background went to a gentle grey instead of white.

Camera settings, and camera gear used

1/160 @ f/5.6 @ 1250 ISO
Sony A1 (B&H / Amazon)
Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM ii (B&H / Amazon)

The lighting setup is quite straightforward. The main light (on camera right), is a 3ft x 4 ft Profoto softbox with the Amaran 300c LED light (B&H).

The fill light behind her, which is feathered away from her, was set to 25% of full output. The light modifier on that rim light is a 1×4 Profoto softbox.

The two Amaran LED lights use a Bowens mount, but since I have a boat load of Profoto gear in the studio, I have Newell mounting adapters (B&H) to mount the Profoto softboxes to the Amaran lights.