5 Best Strobe Lights For Portraits

Lighting is to a photographer what a pen is to an author or a brush to a painter. It opens you up to multiple creative possibilities as you play with everything from shadow effects to glowing patterns. Your success here is determined by the kind of lighting you use, such as continuous lighting, on-camera flashes, or strobe lighting. Today, we’re going to focus specifically on strobe lights for portraits.

Strobe lights use short, strong bursts of light, making them more powerful compared to continuous studio lights. It’s so intense that you can place the light further from the subject and the flashes will overpower the effect of sunlight. This makes the sky appear darker and the sun a secondary source of light.

The light bursts are particularly beneficial for portraits because of subtle differences like capturing the eyes before the pupils dilate. This highlights more iris color in the subject’s eyes compared to continuous lighting.

While strobe lights were initially restricted to studios, most now have battery packs that allow you to use them on-site. They provide stronger lighting than on-camera flashes and have a shorter recycle time. This is how long it takes for the next flash of light to recharge. The short light bursts act as the de facto shutter speed when carrying out high-speed photography.