Eli5: Why does a camera have to flash and time it perfectly when it takes a picture? Can’t the light just stay on?
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Very bright lights need looks of power and make lots of heat.
A flash bulb is actually much much brighter than a standard light, even an LED. They use a lot of power and because of that, leaving them on for long periods of time creates a lot of heat. Studio lights will be just as bright but they are not limited by size or portability so they can have more and larger heat sinks.
Flash bulbs used to be arc lamps that would be fired by a capacitor. You’d head a whine when the capacitor was charging because you need a lot of power to make an arc. Before that they would use carbon filaments which were single use; you would put a bulb in the flash holder, take the picture, then pop out the bulb and throw it away.
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