Continuous Lighting, Dark or Light Room?

Hi, Just getting into trying flower photography indoors with continuous lighting and wondered do you use in normal daylight or is it better to shut out the natural light when doing this?

Yes the image below was taken outside.

Thankyou,

Russ.

No clear answer at hand.

Do you have to worry about mixed color temperatures?

Do you have enough artificial light sources and dedicated controlled reflectors to fill your shadows?

What are you after? - For a lighting learning experience nothing beats a pitch black room and tiny harsh light sources. For everything else spill for fill must be great & handy.

Wise teacher types suggest to start out with a single light and reflectors. I guess keeping natural light for fill is a good idea in that case?

If you're using tungsten lighting you probably don't want to mix daylight with it because of the different color temperature of the different sources--tungsten is red/orange compared to daylight which is blue. A further consideration is the heat from artificial light, which might damage flowers more quickly. Window light with some inexpensive reflectors (pieces of foam core or aluminum foil) might be a good place to start.

Like to thankyou for the replies.

I have the equipment in the form of LCD light/s (Daylight Temp Bulbs) and Flash/Strobes,Softboxes, Umbrellas etc. My biggest problem at this time of year is beleive it or not LIGHT!! The sun is in clear blue skies is very harsh and temps range from 30C to 38C so the indoor photography seemed an obvious choice.

Again thankyou for the replies. Russ.

Then you might think about putting diffusion over the windows to make the light softer, or using a north facing window for a source which won't have direct sunlight.

I don't shoot flowers, but I've done quite a bit of work with flash. I'd suggest that you block out natural light, for now, so that you can experiment with a light source over which you can exercise greater control. Experiment with lighting from different angles and modifiers. Bounce the light off of walls and play with various modifiers.

My father used to shoot orchid pictures with the blue sky as a background.

Maybe a reflector to lighten up shadows.

 

But I have seen great pix shot indoors where you could make a black background, which made some colored flowers pop.

No matter what the subject, IMO the only way to learn about artificial lighting is to start with a completely dark room and add lights or modifiers/reflectors one at a time to see their effect. You obviously can't do this if there's natural light 'polluting' your studio.