They could’ve done either. Modern studio flashes can recharge really quickly, if you tweak the settings so you don’t need to be at full power. Hot lights would also be an option but they’re expensive and hot and overkill for most applications in studio photography.
Permanent light usually does not have the same intensity as a flash. For a flash, capacitors store a LOT of energy to release in a very short period of time, then they need to recharge. Permanent light would require extremely high wattage to compare, which is a dramatic increase in cost.
For a picture like this, you want exposure time to be really low, to get a crisp image of the fluid dynamics. Think 1/1000 of a second. The amount of light a flash pushes out is so dramatically more than constant light usually offers, and no flash recharges fast enough for a burst of shots like that.
Beyond that, you can also see their softbox with the flash above the subject. So I feel confident in my assumptions.
Pretty sure the flash needs to recharge.
Can they not just have really bright lights on for a couple of seconds
(No I’m not a professional photographer, how could you tell?)
They could’ve done either. Modern studio flashes can recharge really quickly, if you tweak the settings so you don’t need to be at full power. Hot lights would also be an option but they’re expensive and hot and overkill for most applications in studio photography.
Permanent light usually does not have the same intensity as a flash. For a flash, capacitors store a LOT of energy to release in a very short period of time, then they need to recharge. Permanent light would require extremely high wattage to compare, which is a dramatic increase in cost.
For a picture like this, you want exposure time to be really low, to get a crisp image of the fluid dynamics. Think 1/1000 of a second. The amount of light a flash pushes out is so dramatically more than constant light usually offers, and no flash recharges fast enough for a burst of shots like that.
Beyond that, you can also see their softbox with the flash above the subject. So I feel confident in my assumptions.