hey guys my name is Francisco Hernandez and today I want to talk about the pros
and the cons of using continuous LED light sources for your on-location
portrait photography so I'm gonna be mentioning the pros and the cons but I
wanted to start with the cons first but before I start talking about those I did
want to mention that I am going to be doing a behind-the-scenes portrait shoot
using continuous LED light sources at the end of the videos so if you guys are
interested in seeing that you can check that out as well
the very first con that I have to mention is the light power from LED
lights in general are gonna be something that's gonna be perfect for late
afternoon indoors or night photography but when it comes to the daytime you
definitely do want to use a strobe or speed light the only way that I can
imagine someone using an LED light willingly is if it's cloudy and that's
kind of killing the intensity of the light and you can kind of match the
intensity of that the cloudy day with your LED light but you definitely would
have to be using it really close and not so modified because modifying the light
to be softer is also going to kind of lower the intensity of the light and
make it weaker and you have to be using it really close to the subject which
could limit your type of photography to headshots or 3/4 I would probably never
see a full body shot with a continuous LED that source outside during a bright
day it is gonna be possible to use an LED during the daytime but if you want
to really overpower the Sun and LED lights are just not gonna be able to do
that the second con that I have to mention is the battery life the battery
life is gonna be something that's going to be dependent on the light source that
you can be using and the power pack the power source that you gonna be using as
well but typically if you use any LED at 100% output it's probably less than an
hour so if you tend to shoot at more than an hour at 100% then that's gonna
be something that you definitely need either a backup battery or you need to
make sure that you're using the light at a lower output which you may or may not
want actually in this video when I show you guys the photo shoot that I did
using my LED lights I actually did start at 100% because I was shooting
earlier in the day that I'm used to so the battery did die but I did have a
backup I wanted to quickly mention the power print that I used in today's video
which is the Vagabond mini lithium by policy buff and the only reason why I
use this power pack and not we mount batteries that these lights are
capable of using is because v-mount batteries are a little bit pricey and I
already had the Vagabond mini lithium so I just got went ahead and used it and
like I said before and this battery the battery on the Vagabond actually did die
but I did have it back up so I ended up using that and I was thankful for that
because if I didn't have that backup then I wouldn't have been able to give
you guys this video or a little bit of the photos at the end of the video the
third con that I have to mention may or may not apply to you depending on the
light that you may be looking to get and that's the fact that you may have to
deal with a lot of quartz for me specifically I was using the aperture
120 D light and that does have a AC power cord and block so that's it that's
one cord that you have to worry about then that may or may not be something
that you care for but if you do have like I'm like me a vagabond minion
lithium and you don't have any V mount batteries and that's another thing you
have to worry about - so you're somebody like me that doesn't like to worry about
any cords and it's used to strobes and speed nights that are cordless then you
definitely want to look into getting a beam up battery the fourth con that I
want to mention is something that again may depend on the light that you make it
and that's the fact that it's gonna be hard to adapt these lights to any Bowens
mount or modifiers in general that you may have like I mentioned before I have
the aperture HR 602 it's a rectangular LED panel and actually did a video that
you can check out in this corner where I use the light for a portrait photo shoot
at night and you guys can tell from if you've seen any of my other videos where
I used like a larger light source you can tell the light quality in that video
is gonna be harsher than what I was used to once the light is very small and
unmodified it's gonna be harsher so that's why when I use that light source
it was something that wasn't used to the light quality being harsher so I ended
up getting the aperture 120 D and that actually uses bonus mount modifiers so I
was really happy with that decision because I was able to use a lot of the
modifiers that every have that I use with my bonus mount Explorer 600 strobe
so that's something that was really interested in getting because of the
fact that heads bones bone so now that I've talked about the cons don't feel
like you don't want to get these lights there are some benefits which I'm going
to mention right now the very first pro that I can
mention is the fact that using an LED light source is really great in that you
see exactly how the shots gonna look like as soon as you turn on the light if
you guys have used any sort of speed light or strobe in the past you know
that you need to take a couple of test shots first before you continue to shoot
even if you use a light meter you have to do it the metering first before you
have to take your photos and with LED lights you don't have to do that you do
have to do a little bit of guesswork into the intensity of light but it's
cool because you can see exactly how the lights gonna look like the intensity
then you know how bright or light or the quality of light as well the harshness
or the softness that's something that I actually really really liked when I'm
using my LED lights for my on-location portrait photography because again it
just takes that a little bit of guesswork from off-camera flash out and
you know that's always a good thing if you're new to photography and you want
to start using off-camera flash but you're kind of used to natural light I
think using LED lights is something that's gonna serve as a great bridge
towards off-camera flash because again like I mentioned before you're seeing
how the lights gonna look like and it's gonna be a lot beneficial and
understanding how light works and it's gonna be something that can really help
you in learning off-camera flash the second Pro that can mention is the fact
that by using an LED light for your portrait photography you get a lot more
of the color in the eye the iris in your subjects eyes previously when I was
using a speed light for my on-location portrait photography I did notice that
when I would take photos and I would get back to retouching them that I did
notice that a lot of the black part of the eye the pupil was really big and of
course that makes sense because I was shooting at night and in order to see in
the night your eyes need to dilate a bit so because they dilated so much you'd
get a lot less color in the eye and that's something that was definitely not
used to because I typically shoot in you know the daytime with my strobes and I
was used to seeing a lot more of the color the third Pro that I wanted to
mention is something that may or may not apply to you depending on the light that
you have or looking at and that's the fact that it can change from tungsten to
daylight the aperture HR 672 that I mentioned that I have I'm actually using
that as a rim light it actually does have the ability it's a bicolor light so
in the portrait shoot I'm gonna show you in a bit I actually did use it as
sometimes in tungsten and sometimes in daylight so that was
really cool and the flexibility that I was able to get I didn't have to worry
about gels or anything the very last proton when I mentioned is that if you
get an LED light for portrait photography you can use the very same
lights for any sort of video or cinematography that you plan to do
either now or in the future I actually have a friend by the name of Jason bong
he's a youtuber as well he uses his LED lights for his intros as
well as for his wedding film cinematography so if you want to use
your lights for a portrait photography just keep in mind that if you get LEDs
you can use them for video work as well alright so that's it for my pros and
cons I did want to leave this video off with a behind-the-scenes look into a
portrait shoot that I did using my LED lights the aperture 120 D any aperture
HR 672 you guys can enjoy that I hope you guys enjoy the photos and the video
and if you guys are new here feel free to subscribe like comment share all that
good stuff and I'll see you guys in the next video
hi guys we're in a different outfit a different location this is a nice cool
anyway we're getting a lot of awesome shots that's green again that's a loud
car and we're shooting with the aperture 120 in the HR 670 - hey guys I mean if
you came while I was recording he wanted to be in the video so I'm doing that
he's doing whatever but yeah he's he's gotten older since the last time here's
another video of mine and yeah see you guys later