Advantages and disadvantages of daylight, tungsten and flash
DAYLIGHT
advantages
- Great intensity: sunlight is the most intense and potent light we have available.
- Free energy
- Highly variable: this is an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time. Sunlight varies throughout the day as well as throughout the year. This enables us to achieve a great variety of illumination styles.
- Optimal spectrum composition: sunlight has every wavelength: red, green and blue
disadvantages
- Depends on the season
- Depends on the time of the day
- Depends on the weather: sunny, cloudy, rain
- It is subject to colour temperature changes.
LIGHT BULB:
advantages
- Direct connection to electrical network
- Low cost: tungsten equipment is cheaper than flashes or HMI.
- Independent from the time and day of the year
- Work to register movement
disadvantages
- High energy consumption: the electricity bill can get quite high
- Colour temperature is not constant: they have a specific colour temperature when they are brand new and it changes as they are used.
- Generate a lot of heat.
- Even when they are potent, they have a low intensity which requires a long period of exposition or a wide open diaphragm.
- Requires the use of correction filters or tungsten film (in the case of using films). Digital cameras can use the White Balance function.
FLASH
advantages
- Constant light.
- Constant colour temperature: 5500K
- Low energy consumption
- Generate little heat
- They are highly potent, thus, shorter periods of exposure can be used.
- They can be independent from the electrical network.
- We can use daylight film without having to use filters.
- Very potent
- Different accessories can be used to diffuse light.
disadvantages
- They are expensive
- Generally, we need to connect them to the network.
