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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It is of course possible to take a photo using continuous bright lights, and this is often done. For example in a professional photoshoot there will be lots of lights involved, or when photographing performers who would be distracted by a flash photographers may carry dedicated lights.
The price of this is that for a sufficiently bright light you need a large battery, and at least historically a bulb would also get hot and so need to be large to allow heat dissipation. A flash gets round this because it is only on for a tiny moment. The total amount of energy used per photo is therefore small, despite the light being extremely bright.
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