Last Updated 12th November 2023

Hybrid lighting is a relatively new concept combining the advantages of both continuous LED and flash lighting in a single unit. Instead of employing traditional flash technology, these lights use LED panels for both continuous and flash operation, “overcharging” the LEDs to provide a brief burst of higher-powered output for flash-style stills photography.

Why would you want such a thing? Well, imagine that you’re shooting video but also need to produce a few stills or vice versa. Just a couple of years ago, this would either have meant making do and shooting your stills using the continuous lights - with all the technical compromises and risks that entails - or wasting a lot of time setting up 2 sets of lights for a single shot. Not anymore; now you light the scene once, and can seamlessly switch back and forth between flash and continuous shooting without needing to make any changes to the lighting.

Hybrid lights come with both advantages and disadvantages. Where they win out over traditional flash units is when it comes to recycling times and HSS. However, here improved speed comes with a compromise in terms of output power, so don’t expect to be shooting at f/22 on 100 ISO as you might with a regular studio strobe.

FV150 / FV200

The Godox FV150 and FV200 are the brand’s first forays into producing hybrid LED flash systems. Daylight-balanced, offering amazing colour stability, and delivering a very accurate output range, these units function like regular mains-powered studio lights for both videos and stills photography; actually outperforming much more powerful LEDs from competing brands. But now switch over to flash operation, and these units perform almost as equally well, with the 400% overcharge providing a flash output that is almost 2 stops brighter than the continuous LED. In most cases, this will be just enough to freeze action.

Given that LED flashes are always lower-powered than traditional strobe systems, it makes sense to go for the highest-powered unit you can find. That being the case, clearly, the FV200 will be the most useful of the 2 models here.