Photography means the art of drawing with light and how can you master this art, until you know the tools that you need to succeed. Just like different kind of paint brushes to paint your paintings, photography also requires a wide range of lights to paint your photographic canvas with. The types of lights that can help you get the right picture at the right time can be placed into two categories.

The first category is based on their make. Different lights are made differently. Some of them are made with frenel glasses and some do not have a glass in front of them. If you know the make of the light, then you can always use it the right way. Solar lights which are made from tungsten, with frennel glasses in front of them, help to give a more concentrated light. Then there are flex lights which have flex umbrellas behind them that bounces the light and makes the light diffused. Look at the image below, this is a flex light with umbrellas. Flex light helps to create an ambience and a filling feel to the scene. Flood light are also included under this category.

The second category to for categorising flash lights is their usage and what effect they have. Flash lights are obviously standards with many cameras, or are offered as add-ons, like the Sony HVL-F42AM camera flash unit; however, there are many more types of flash lights. It is very important to know the effect all the lights have so that you can use them judiciously.  On the basis of effect, there are hard lights which give hard shadows and are very concentrated; then there are soft lights which have a diffused lighting effect and give a soft well lit feel to the image. Next, there are backlights used for lighting backgrounds, kick lights, hair lights, clothes light etc.