Buying Studio Lights: 

Need You Go Pro?

What’s the real difference between a studio light costing $200 and another costing few times that? The answer might surprise you.

Shopping for studio lights in a good camera store, you see two light kits side by side:  Both are daylight balanced, slave sensor built in, reflector hood included, similar features, and similar warranties.  Yet one sells for $199 and the other for $799.  There must be some difference between the lights, but should you pay the difference?  That depends on how – and how much – you’ll use the lights.

The class system for studio lights: Weekend photographer and pro

Studio-light manufacturers typically design, build, and market their lights to suit one of two types of users:  the weekend-photographer user or the professional.  (See “What Kind of Studio Light User Are you” chart.)  Both have different needs and place different demands on their studio lights.

For example, the weekend photographer may have less experience with studio lights (this may be his first studio light), so such simple touches as easy control and intuitive labeled buttons give him confidence to operate the lights effectively while growing his skills.  Function trumps finesse for this user with continuous dimmer output setting that operates intuitively, sometimes at the sacrifice for fine adjustability.  The weekend photographers uses the lights less frequently, for shorter periods of time, in simpler settings which require less power, and is more likely to replace the lights than repair them because of the price point, so service-ability means less to him.

The pro, on the other hand, may use the lights all day, every day and is more concerned with power (for larger-scale projects), performance, and precision than ease of use.  In fact, a pro may not use the continuous dimmer at all, opting to change the output by the fixed-increment dial, desired lighting ratio, and the distance between the lights from the subject to get the most precise reading and consistent light quality.  He’s also more inclined to perform routine maintenance, so the light design he chooses should promote ease of self-service with such features as externally replaceable modeling lamps and flash tubes.

Although those profiles appear to be black-and-white, in truth there are many “grey” users.  For instance, an up-and-coming photographer may buy pro studio lights because he doesn’t want to mess with buying a step-up lights later.  And we’ve seen weekend photographers in pro studios (typically dedicated to a specific occasional task) alongside the pro studio lights assigned to tougher daily assignments. 

Pro studio lights outperform weekend-photographer studio lights when the heat is on

You can’t judge studio lights by its outward appearance, so we went undercover to see what separates weekend-photographer and pro lights, disassembling several lights.  After tearing into the tools, we showed them to Flora Yang, the top studio lighting consultant at CAI Cameras, a local photo specialty store.

Yang says studio lights’ number one enemy is heat, which shortens the life of the capacitors and electronic components.  Yang says that the weekend-photographer lights should not be operated rapidly for more than 10 shots at a time due to heat buildup.  It should be allowed to cool for few minutes before using it again or given a few seconds between flashes.  The pro lights, she says, could probably fire 20 shots continuously before heat begins to take its tool.  It’s ready to get back to work in only 1-2 minutes.  She speculates that under identical working conditions, the pro lights would last at least three times as long as the weekend photographer lights.

So, what does all this mean to you?

First off, from the outside of the lights, it’s hard to tell a weekend-photographer lights from pro lights.  Price and brand name are your best indicators:  JTL, White Lightning, Alien Bees, Photogenic, just to name a few, represent the weekend photographer category, while Profoto, Speedotron Black Line, Norman, and few others typically build to pro standards.

If you honestly assess yourself using the user profiles shown in the chart, you may find that you can save money by buying weekend-photographer lights, and still have a tool that will last your lifetime.  Or you may discover that your level of usage warrants and justifies spending the extra money on pro-level lights, with bigger savings over the long haul.

At the prices of most weekend-photographer level lights, we think that most photographers will benefit from having both kinds:  Keep the pro-level lights on hand for the studio tasks, and weekend-photographer lights for on locations and specific tasks.  The time savings alone from not having to set up lights quickly makes up for the extra money you’ll spend.

WHAT KIND OF STUDIO LIGHT USER ARE YOU?