Well, I'm soon to take the leap into needing something a little more grounded that my trusty 580ex (or metz 45 CL-4 hammerhead) flashgun.

Thing is, I can't decide on continuous or flash lighting systems, and it's been about a decade since I used either! I need something portable that can be packed into the one bag, as I'll be hauling it to jobs.

I have about £500 to spend, and I've seen a fair few decent looking kits for about that price mark, but I thought I'd see if anyone on here has any advice before I take the plunge.

I've been using a couple of 'continuous' heads with 2 or 3 'daylight' lamps each. Not sure exactly what they are, my partner bought them a couple of years ago for taking out to people's homes for location portraits - babies and family stuff. I guess they're not quite as powerful as a flash unit and not as controllable ultimately but they're easy to use - kinda WYSIWYG I guess - you don't need to worry about modelling lights. She looked at some flat panel lights in Harrisons at first but then bought these things instead. I can find out exactly what they are and what they cost if you're interested.

Continuous -
+ WYSIWYG lighting, easy to work with.
- Not as powerful as flash units
- get hot quickly

Flash/strobes -
+ powerful lights
- some subjects my find flashes distracting/uncomfortable
- expensive compared to continuous kits, cheap flash (~£4-500) kits probably wont have a lot of umph

Continuous -
- get hot quickly

Not always - the ones I've used have those low energy wiggly bulbs and stay relatively cool. They're obviously not like the ones you put in your hall and landing tho coz they're pretty much instant on and are daylight balanced. Running cool was a priority when Ms Imp bought them since you don't want little kids sticking their fingers into hot lights!

Do it Strobist (http://www.strobist.com)style. I am doing it and I love it. Enough for even pro things, well, most of the time.

The main arguments against continuous lighting were always:

They get hot
The colour balance is "wrong) - ie too yellow
The bulbs didn't last very long

have a look on ebay - modern continuous lights are daylight balanced, energy saving, cool running, and the bulbs last about 10,000 hours.

They are more predictable than flash, do not require a flash meter, and can be usaed with any camera - no need for connecting cables from camera to lights and no need for infra-red / radio triggers - can also be used for video - all in all, a good choice I think