Not so long ago, AC-powered studio lights were the only option for serious studio photography, and low-cost starter sets like this Two Monolight Portrait Studio Kit¹ were a fixture in every neighborhood camera shop. With the digital revolution and explosion of consumer photography, speedlight-style² portable flash is increasingly sophisticated, cheap, and powerful.
If I’m building up a new portrait studio, what are the advantages and disadvantages of cheap “monoblock” studio strobes like those in that kit vs. speedlights? In what situations would one choice have an advantage over the other? I assume the AC-powered strobes are much more powerful than a typical³ speedlight; how much more powerful — and when does it matter?
What about as we go up the price range? Do the pros and cons change if I have a lot of money to spend? Are there advantages that expensive studio lights have that the low-end kit doesn’t offer?
Fundamentally, if you’re buying a digital camera, buying a cheap (perhaps used and out-modeled) interchangeable lens camera gets you into a whole different level of system, better for really learning photography than than a fully-automatic point and shoot which might even cost more. Do studio strobes offer similar advantages in what you can do, or is it a different situation?
1. Chosen at random. Not an endorsement. /
2. We sometimes call them hotshoe flash, but in this case they might be in a cold shoe controlled wirelessly. / 3. Extra question: products like the GN80 bare-bulb, separate-power-pack yet hotshoe mount Godox Witstro 360 seem to blur the lines; how does this and similar products fit in?
