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Fluorescent Lights


Nelson

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Hello,

 

I'm extremely new to this DP stuff and needed a little advice on lighting.

 

I'm shooting a kitchen scene using 200T 16mm film.

 

There's a big window letting in daylight and an overhead fixture of fluorescent tubes (Cool White). I've decided to use an 85 Filter to balance the window light to Tungesten. The fluourescent tubes are not rated at Tungsten, so how do I balance it without buying special tungsten tubes?

 

Do I use a magenta gel or can I use full CTB?

 

Please help.

 

Thanks

Nelson

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well the tricky thing here is that you don't really know the color temp or the green/magenta shift of those tubes. if you could get your hands on a color temperature meter all questions would be answered. If it turns out that the tube is closer to daylight (cool white) and you use full ORANGE (CTO) on the bulb you might as well turn it off because you will not get much light out of it. are you considering all of this because you will actually see the tube in a shot? there is also the strobing effect that may or may not occur...

 

standard flos can be a nightmare. can you just turn the thing off and forget about it?

 

F

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well the tricky thing here is that you don't really know the color temp or the green/magenta shift of those tubes. if you could get your hands on a color temperature meter all questions would be answered. If it turns out that the tube is closer to daylight (cool white) and you use full ORANGE (CTO) on the bulb you might as well turn it off because you will not get much light out of it. are you considering all of this because you will actually see the tube in a shot? there is also the strobing effect that may or may not occur...

 

standard flos can be a nightmare. can you just turn the thing off and forget about it?

 

F

 

Thank you very much for the help. I understand what you are saying. I don't have a color temp meter, but I believe it's a cool white. That would be rated at 4100K right? Anyway, I will probably just turn off the light.

 

But if the daylight coming in from the window is not enough, what types of other light sources do you suggest I use?

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Hi,

 

Since the regular fluorescent has an interrupted spectrum, the color temp meter isn't very useful in this situation. A half or quarter minus green gel would get rid of the green spike somehow. But usually cool white fluorescent light is much cooler than tungsten so half or quarter CTO will bring down the kelvin temperature to tungsten level, or half/quarter CTB to match with the daylight. Then again, you loose quite a lot of light by all these filterations, so as Mr. Barrera suggested, your best bet is simply turning it off and augment with other type of lights if needed.

 

You didn't really specified the scene so I have no idea what kind of light would be appropriate, but I would play with big bounce card, reflector, or bounced HMI that could match with the daylight.

 

Ljoski J

Edited by ljoski johnsen
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Hi,

 

Since the regular fluorescent has an interrupted spectrum, the color temp meter isn't very useful in this situation. A half or quarter minus green gel would get rid of the green spike somehow. But usually cool white fluorescent light is much cooler than tungsten so half or quarter CTO will bring down the kelvin temperature to tungsten level, or half/quarter CTB to match with the daylight. Then again, you loose quite a lot of light by all these filterations, so as Mr. Barrera suggested, your best bet is simply turning it off and augment with other type of lights if needed.

 

Ljoski J

 

Got it. Thanks. I'm definitely just going to lose the light.

 

Nelson

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