Mixing Continuous And Strobe Lights For Portraits

For me, I’ve always used studio strobes as strobes, but Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz over at AurumLight reminds us that if you have access to a studio strobe, you almost surely have instant access to another light source: the strobe modeling light.

Jaroslav uses three Einsteins heads to shoot this great portrait – Girl With The Broken Heart. This allows him to use a warm light coming from the modeling lamp, without gelling it. it also provides a different timing plane as continuous light has a lingering effect on the model rather than freezing it as a strobe. [Yup, so you get a whole new factor of creativity to play with]

The video below combined with Jaroslav’s post is an excellent primer and a pretty thorough explanation on how gels work with both continuous lights and strobes.

If you appreciate this technique, we featured Benjamin Von Wong doing a continuous/strobe mix a few weeks back on a larger scale to capture dancers movements.

[AurumLight via ISO 1200 | Strobist]