Originally posted by magkelly Flashes have their place but honestly I don't like the light they give and I try to avoid it unless I'm on the go and a flash is the only light I can tote.
I know where you are coming from, but note that the problem with flash light is not that it isn't natural light, but that speedlights (and the bulbs of strobes) are so small and hence make for a small and harsh light source. Unfortunately, people often neglect to use light modifiers with flash light.
Furthermore, there seems to be a widely held belief that light modifiers such as sold by Gary Fong should do the trick, while they are completely useless unless used in close proximity to large reflecting surfaces in the correct way. Even the slightly more sensible pop-on softboxes for speedlights are not really making enough of a difference unless one photographs very small products, or similar.
Originally posted by magkelly There are so many other ways to add light if you want. In the studio I use stationary lamps, reflectors, V flats, diffusion panels, so much more often than flash.
But luckily, this is not a question of "either or".
V-flats, reflectors, diffusers, scrims, etc. should be regarded as accessories to be used with flash, not as an alternative to flash light that only work with natural light. Natural light sometimes (not always) is available as a diffused source so it has a "head start" over flash in such situations, but unless you use these light modifiers you mentioned, you won't be getting truly good results with natural light either in the vast majority of cases.
Originally posted by magkelly Check out the work of Sue Bryce. She has a few videos online, some on You Tube, Creative Live. Watch what she can do with a window, a couple of reflectors, a small v-flat and a curtain.
I know Sue's work and agree that it's great.
You will have noticed that she goes to great length to diffuse the natural light before it hits her subjects.
Do the same with flash light, and you'll get the same result.
Have you seen the CreativeLive workshop where she recreated a lot of her lighting setups with artificial light with the help of Felix Kunze? If you watch this one, you'll see that Felix Kunze just replaces the sun with one light source but then takes care to get the same amount of diffusion that Sue employs with her natural light techniques. It really isn't hard to get high quality light from flashes/strobes, one just has to use them the right way. Bounce flash off a large reflector, off walls, through scrims, etc. and you'll be able to get the "natural light look" anywhere, at any time of the day.
Natural light of course has the advantage that (when available) it is a bright constant source which means you get a "real time preview" of the lighting result and furthermore there are no limitations for shutter speed (which are present with flash light, unless you use HSS flash). So natural light can be more straightforward to work with, if it is available from a useful direction. Having said that, it was sometimes painful to watch Sue and Felix slow down when using artificial light, e.g., when using a neutral density filter to address the sync-speed limit, when there was absolutely no need to. Sometimes they just should have reduced the power of the strobe instead of being "non-technical" about it with a "just set it anywhere"-attitude and "treating it like the sun". They could have also used a moderately powerful constant light source to get a preview of the lighting scenario, etc. Many times, they struggled (a bit) unnecessarily.
I'm not against natural light at all and would use it first whenever it works, but the "good light" is made by diffusion (clouds or V-flats or scrims) so the magic is in the modifiers, not in the source.