Do you need expensive lights?

Will you be able to tell the difference?

Studio Lighting. By Pixels on Pixabay. Image modified by the author.

Equipment acquisition syndrome. This is a real problem for many photographers. Many photographers focus on spending a lot of money on camera bodies and lenses. But you can also have equipment acquisition syndrome for lights too.

Equipment acquisition syndrome (EAS) is the issue of thinking that spending money on the newest, latest, greatest, and most expensive equipment will improve your photography. But the truth is that you don’t have to spend a load of money for great results, even in lighting.

So, I have a challenge for you. In this article, I am going to post several images. For two of the photos, the lighting was LED constant lights. For one photo, the lighting is a Profoto studio strobe. And for one photo the lighting will be inexpensive AlienBee and Godox lights.

Also, to make this fair for lighting evaluation, these are basically straight out of the camera (a couple were cropped). I did not want to let the edits throw off the assessment. I will put the camera info in the caption of the photos. All photos were taken by me. Try to guess the lighting on the image before scrolling to the description below.