kino flos and fluorescents

freddie bonfanti · December 9, 2005

hi

whats the difference when lighting film with fino flos and fluorescent lights? i imagine the film would get a greenish look, am i right? i often think that fluorescent would give a great look, especially if covered with different colored material...

Michael LaVoie · December 9, 2005

Kino's flourescent bulbs are full spectrum and come in 3200K and 5200K. Regular flourescent bulbs come in 65KFull spectrum, cool white or warm white but usually have a more noticeable green spike to them that is easily corrected with minus green gel.

If you're thinking of using Flourescent lights to light a scene as opposed to renting Kino's, you can. I've gotten great results with homemade foamcore softboxes that I've built for compact flourescent Atype bulbs. Not the tubes but the spiral bulbs. You can buy a 42 w flo bulb that puts out 150 watts (2800lumens). You can get these in daylight or tungsten. Pack six of them together in a box put some reflective material behind em and you'll get a F2 from 8 feet away. They're considerably cheaper than Kino's and the level of control is about the same. You'll have to make your own eggcrates for em depending on the size of the box you build. It takes a little time and determination but in the end you'll save a lot of money and you won't have to worry about someone stealing or damaging a precious and expensive kino light. If it breaks you can fix it yourself as opposed to tinkering with a KinoFlo ballast.

David Mullen ASC · December 9, 2005

Generally with any fluorescent tube, Kinos included, the higher the CRI value, the less of a green spike there is and the more full-spectrum the source is.

So go to a hardware store and look at some of the CRI values of the tubes listed -- you want something in the 90's at least. This doesn't take into account their color temperature, which is a different issue, whether the tube is closer to tungsten (3200K) or daylight (5500K).