Used Lighting

Used lighting includes continuous, strobe, and flash illumination to create the right tonal, shadowing, and luminosity effects for photography or videography. Lighting gear can be used in photo studios, film sets, or outdoors.

Used lighting equipment also includes light controls that allow photographers and videographers to regulate the brightness and direction of the light, including reflectors, umbrellas, and filters. Accessories like mounts, stands, and remote controls are also available.

Types of Used Photography Lighting

Photography and videography illumination includes continuous lighting, strobe lighting, and flash.

Continuous lighting

Continuous lights are pre-set and “always on,” to capture your subjects in great light. The equipment includes tungsten, fluorescent, and LED lighting in single spotlights and floodlights or arrayed in flat-screen panels, each providing specific color tonality. For instance, used tungsten lights emit a warm, red-orange color, while fluorescent gives off a daylight-white color you can soften. LED lighting provides color-adjustable warm-bright output you can dim as necessary.

Strobe lights

Strobe lights are triggered by camera flashes or off-camera slave flashes that trip the strobe when it detects light from another flash. Most used strobe lighting equipment consists of monolights, or self-contained light housings to direct illumination. Some strobes are battery-powered heads connecting to a camera’s hot shoe, or flash mount. Most used monolights are tungsten or fluorescent.

Flash lighting

Flash lighting uses off-camera strobe-style illumination using slave flashes, and hot shoe mounts triggered by the shutter and ring lights comprised of small fluorescent bulbs arrayed in circular housings that fit around the camera lens. Macro ring lights are invaluable for illuminating tiny objects in extreme close-up photography. Ring lights for standard lenses are ideal for portraiture work, focusing light on a subject’s eyes while eliminating shadows.

Accessories for Secondhand Lighting Equipment

A variety of equipment helps light sources create specific tonal effects by directing, diffusing, highlighting, or condensing illumination. They include light controls such as dimmers and slave remotes, light-diffusing filters and scrims, and used lighting reflectors for re-directing sources of illumination. Other pieces include:

• Barn door light shrouds with flaps that open or close for full or focused illumination
• Softbox light housings for dispersing illumination gently on subjects
• Snoot tubes attaching to the front of lights to condense illumination into a focused beam

In addition, accessories are available for attaching housings to light sources, including speed rings for continuous or strobe light softboxes.