Alright you could choose between flash
or LED, which one would you use and why?
I'll tell you after the intro.
Hey there.
Welcome back to Ask David Bergman
here on Adorama TV.
I'm answering your photo
questions and I've got a good one today
from Radu S.
What do you think about LED
lights? They seem to only travel a short
distance as opposed to using flash,
so is it worth the investment or not?
LED lights, alright what we're talking
about when we talk about LEDs are
constant lights, like this one a light that's on
all the time.
Back in the old days when I
was a boy... 'get off my lawn you damn kids'...
back then, we used what we called
hot lights, and they were either tungsten,
and then they were fluorescent, but they
were, they tended to get really hot right?
Because that's how they work, they
generated a lot of heat, they were
difficult to deal with...
you had to either use gloves...
or you didn't let them cool
for a long time before you could even
touch them after you were done.
These days, we have these nice cool LED lights,
they they work really, really well,
they use them in video, they use them in
still production all over the place.
So we have many options...
Now, now what are the differences
between the two?
Well first of all let's talk about why
they're the same, we're gonna do a quick
picture here today with our friend Brooke...
Say hi to the camera Brooke...
there you go, so am we are going to do a
quick picture now.
First I'm gonna do this with the
flasher, there's a Profoto flash, I've
got the remote on, and I'm gonna just
take a quick picture of Brooke so you
can get an idea of what we're dealing
with here.
We've got her green eyes
against the lime green background,
and ready and boom.
Alright so there's a quick picture,
now I'm going to turn off
the flash, and I'm gonna switch to the
LED, and I'm gonna take the same picture.
The lights gonna be coming from the
other side, but it's basically the same
exact photo, there we go...
looking lovely, and boom, okay, so now
let's look at the two pictures..
they look pretty similar, like I said,
why would you choose one or
the other... well there are some
similarities between these two lights.
First of all let's talk about light
modifiers, you can buy white modifiers
for flashes or LEDs.
These days some of them even have the
same mounts.
You can actually get the same light
modifiers for either LED lights or flashes,
so softboxes, umbrellas, barn-doors, any of
those kinds of things you want to use,
you can actually use on either or... the
flash or the LED, so it's really not an
issue so much.
Lets talk about price?
You can get really inexpensive in either,
or you can get really expensive,
so it really just depends on your budget,
and the things you need built into that, to
those lights, how much power, and those
kinds of things.
So really a non-issue as well because
you can go either way with either flash
or LED.
So why would use one or the other,
alright let's talk about LEDs now for a second.
The main thing about constant
lights is, they are'/what you see is what,
you get'
WYSIWYG right?
So as I'm looking at the light here on Brooke,
What I'm seeing is exactly what I'm shooting
with the flash, I'm only seeing the light
after the pictures taken, and I either
have to meter it with a light meter,
or look at the picture on the screen, on my
camera or on a computer, and then make
adjustments.
With this I can actually see
the light as it's hitting her, so it
makes it easier to deal with.
If you're shooting let's say a still-life, it's
really nice, because you can actually
adjust your modifiers and watch for
reflections and things like that in real
time or IRL as the kids say,
and you can make it all happen as you're
going...
so that's kind of a nice benefit of LEDs,
also if you're shooting video LEDs
really the only way to go, flash doesn't
just doesn't work on video very well as
you're probably seeing when I was taking
that picture you were only seeing a blip
of the flash, but we're using LEDs to
light me here, so the constant light you
need when you're shooting video, the
other thing is some of these LEDs some
of the more expensive ones have
adjustable color temperature, so you can
go warmer or colder with that light
without using external gels or anything
like that, to change the color of the
light, so that's kind of nice to have
that built into some LEDs.
Lastly some people feel like flashes can be
unnerving or distracting for people.
If it's somebody who's maybe not used to
being in front of the camera
like Brooke is,
if you're doing a corporate headshot
for example,
I know a few corporate
headshot photographers who use LED
lights, because once the subject is in
front of the lights and their eyes
adjust, and they get used to being there
she can just shoot away, and not have to
worry about flashes constantly popping
off, and if you're just not used to that,
it might be a little unnerving and it
could show in the images.
So that's a personal preference, but I do know some
people who prefer that.
Now let's talk about flash.
Why would you use flash?
The main is power..
you get a lot more power
pound-for-pound out of a flash, than you
do out of an LED.
Even with a small speed light with four
double A batteries, I can
kill the ambient light in almost any
situation, I can get enough power out of
that big flash, out of that little flash.
I should say even sometimes to overpower
the sunlight outside.
If I get that lighting close enough...
I can really overpower the Sun with an LED.
The more expensive ones like this one,
we're at full power, you might be able to fill
in the shadows in sunlight, but really
the to over power completely,
it's gonna be challenging to do,
with LED lights.
The other thing is, by having more power with
the flash, it allows you to lower your
ISO, so you're gonna get higher quality image.
You could shoot at lower ISOs and
you can speed up your shutter speed,
you could probably shoot at your maximum
flash sync speed, which is 1/200th
of a second, 1/250th of a second, and a lot
of them have high speed sync capability
so if you're shooting action of any kind,
something that's moving, you're
definitely gonna freeze the action, even
something that's not moving that much,
unless you're on a tripod, and the
subject isn't moving at all, you're gonna
have a little bit of motion for example.
Let me just go in here, I'm gonna make
another quick picture of Brooke, and I'm
gonna turn the flash back on, I'm gonna
zoom in really tight on her eyes, so you
can just see how we're doing here.
So at t1/200th of a second, at f/5.6...boom,
so you can see that is tak sharp right?
I'm at 100 iso 1/200th of a second,
at f/5.6...
Now if i want to use this LED, I'm going
to turn the flash off to shoot at 100
ISO, at f/5.6, I've got to bring my
shutter speed way down to 1/10th of a
second, that first picture that I did at
the beginning of the video, I was at a
1/10th of a second.
When it's a wide shot you really can't see
it but when I go in
real tight on her eyes.
You can see here even as holding as still
as I can, when you look at that picture
really tight on her eyes,
you could see that there's
movement there, because 1/10th of a second
she's moving a little bit, I'm moving a
little bit, it's gonna be really hard to
freeze that action. So flash definitely
gives you way more power in general than
you're gonna have with LEDs.
Now is it worth the investment?
You know that's.. it's a personal question,
it really depends what you're shooting.
Like I said if you're shooting
still-lifes, and you're in the studio
everything's locked down on a tripod, and
nothing's moving LEDs are a great way to
go, for the reasons that I talked about/
For portraits I generally prefer flash,
it just has a crispness to it, a
crispness to it, and you can freeze
everything a lot more... faster shutter
speeds, lower ISOs.
I find it's a better way to work with that,
so Radu, I hope that answers your question.
Listen I know you all have photo
questions out there,
go to AskDavidBergman.com,
ask away, there's a forum on
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