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Can you use a different bulb for a portrait lighting kit other than what came with it?

I bought a lighting kit to take portraits at home on Ebay (yeah….I know!). Anyways, I didn’t know it was the flash type that only lights up with the flash of my camera. That is the only way it will work. It has some type of flash sensor or something. This makes all the photos way too bright since the camera flash is working too. Could I use a regular type bulb to make the light constant? The seller wouldn’t take it back or let me exchange it without paying a huge price difference. Now I can’t afford to buy another. Thanks!

you should be able to compensate the output of the strobes- try using the exposure compensation on your camera, or dialing down the camera’s flash; (look in your camera manual for how to reduce the flash output- it should shift the metering to allow less light) What mode are you shooting in? Try closing down your aperture by a couple of stops. Your camera should read the light emitted by the strobes and control the output accordingly.- you don’t say what type of camera/lighting you are using, so it’s impossible to give accurate advice. But if the lights are smart enough to fire with a trigger and your camera is smart enough to control them, then it should definitely be possible to adjust the output. Read some online tutorials on using strobes and see if they help, or find some books in the library.

http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/7-metering-techniques/

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