Whatever your chosen medium, good lighting is crucial when shooting portraits indoors. If you find it difficult to work with flash for your film photography, you might want to consider using constant or continuous lighting instead. As with flash, you can use it bare, pair with modifiers, place behind scrims and other tools. The pros and cons of using constant lighting are the same for both film and digital, but of course, these are more crucial when shooting with the former.

To help you get an idea on what it’s like to shoot with constant lighting for film photography, Los Angeles-based filmmaker, actor and film photographer Mike Gray shared a fun shoot he did in the video above. He picked a very nice indoor location in Downtown LA, but it didn’t have a lot of natural light. So, aside from his Pentax 67 and Mamiya RB67 with Kodak Portra 800 and Kodak Tri-X 400, he decided to bring along a Profoto Strobe with ARRI Tungsten light as a continuous light source. It was the first time he shot film with this kind of lighting, but he got some really great results!

Got some tips for making the most out of constant lighting for portrait photography? Share them away in the comments below, or join the Photofocus Community if you haven’t yet to start a discussion!