LED vs Flash

In yesterday's post I shared an image taken to "find the hero" in the shot.  To help bring attention to the subject I choose to shoot wide open at F 1.8 and focus only on my subject.  Even though there were hundreds of people in the room the focus was only on my main subject.  If I'd used a traditional flash I wouldn't be able to shoot wide open as I wished.

Today, I want to share the lighting that helps me shoot in this manner and is a huge departure from how many are taught to shoot parties or events.  The lighting I love for working in these types of events are LED lights.  The output of light is minimal but you don't always need to shoot at F 8.0 or more and during the times when you want to have shallow depth of field these lights are quite amazing.  What I like about this brand of LED's is that I can control the color temperature by selecting one of the color setting on the back.  The one I have used most often is the 3200k setting.  The color temperature ranges from 2800k to 6500k.  2800 being the warmest (or yellow) setting and 6500k being on the cooler (blue) side.

The LED light works off of batteries the same as your on-camera flash but seem to last much longer.  When using AA batteries I prefer to use re-chargeable batteries as they seem to last longer.  I would suggest doing your own test if you are interested in using these lights.  The test is fairly simple.

To test your LED lights do the follow:

Shoot in a dark room without any artificial or sunlight.  Take one photo at each of the different color settings:
2800k
3200k
4000k
4800k
5600k
6500k

Don't judge your images by the back of your camera.  You can't judge color from your display as its only meant to show you to image, not give you accurate color.  Download the images on your computer and see which color setting you like best.  If you're interested in shooing wide open I would suggest also testing each of your lenses out at the widest F-stop to see which is the sharpest.  Zoom lenses tend to not be as sharp as the prime lenses and for this reason I rarely use zoom lenses, but this is a personal choice.  If you're interested in purchasing these lights made by Visio find out more by going to the following link.  LED Lights.

I wish you all the best now go out and shoot great pictures!

Always Dream Big