I understand that our tungsten bulbs will gradually give way to energy efficient fluorescent bulbs. They are now sold in the stores and appearing in homes and commercial/retail settings.

Once was, when I lit a scene with strobes, I dragged the shutter to get some warm spots from small tungsten lights that were already present. Ditto for shooting shooting outdoor light from inside.

But these little pigtail bulbs can give anything from an ugly red-orange-yellow to a greenish blue, depending on their Kelvin temp and whatever secret mix of herbs and spices coats their external glass envelope.

So what's a photographer to do? Carry one's own stash of tungsten bulbs and switch when you can, or drop plus green gels into drop into the lamps? Or do some other magic when they are down-lights in a ceiling?

Then, of course, we have to convert the resulting strobe/ambient light back to daylight through on-camera filter or, more likely, white balancing in our cameras or in post.

So, has anyone encountered these new lights yet, and if so, how did you handle them.

Bill Jackson
Motown

I have a personal project that involves a lot of pictures taken in bathrooms. Since the bathroom in my current studio is a) small, b) not well ventilated, and c) at the mercy of my studio partner, who uses it more than I and never changes light bulbs, I replaced all the tungsten bulbs with color-balanced spiral fluorescent bulbs. They work great. I occasionally have to twiddle the WB a bit, especially when I'm using a Speedlite, but it's never a major pain. The key is getting good ones. I try to buy them all at the same time including a few spares so they all come from the same manufacturing lot. (They do shift a bit over time, but every little bit helps.)

M

No easy answer unless you can swap out bulbs at a location. I've been experimenting with a few CFL's to see what works well. You can get a variety of color temperatures, but the specification to pay attention to is its CRI (Color Rendering Index)number. The higher this number is, the more spectrally continuous it will be and in general, higher in cost. I picked up a few CFL's at Walmart that I've found not too bad and reasonably priced. These are rated at 6500K so they aren't too far from daylight and strobe color temps. I have seen some around 5500 K online. GE product sheet below.

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I wonder if you can find new fluorescent bulbs that are equivalent to a 15 watt tungsten? I usually replace existing bulbs with 15 watt bulbs to get the look of the lamp being on, but not burned out. All the advertising I've seen touts the fact that they are brighter than tungsten. I would be looking for dimmer.

Scotti

quote:

Originally posted by StMarc:
[qb] I have a personal project that involves a lot of pictures taken in bathrooms.
[/qb]

TMI

I was waiting for that. I didn't say anything about toilets, you perv.

Anyway, what I meant to add was, I wonder if the conversation about CFL might be sort of a mis-step, since long before tungsten bulbs go away we'll probably have switched from fluorescent bulbs to LED or cold-cathode bulbs as the primary energy-saving illuminator. They're even more efficient, they last even longer, and the prices are coming down. I've already started to see "LED hot light" illuminators for camcorders and so forth.

M