Flourescent light in studio

[john_sack]

I am doing a garage conversion (20feet square garage, peaked ceiling)

and have a choice of installing flourescent lights in coves/chases on

two of the four walls, or installing incandescent lights that will be

pointed up and bounce off the ceiling.

 

I would have picked incandescent normally, but the flourescent will

provide more light, even light, lower temp, lower cost, etc. for other

uses the studio will have (exercise, painting).

 

Note that I am not talking about the flourescents being the main light

in a soft box.

 

I understand there are now daylight balanced high fidelity flourescent

bulbs (verilux makes tubes that are 6280K and 94.5 CRI:

http://www.toolsforwellness.com/40wat48fluor.html )

 

Are these good enough for use in the studio?

 

I would probably shoot natural light as much as I can, and I have

studio lights (WL x1600) as well. But sometimes I just know I'll

shoot with the flourescents on for convenience (of course with white

balance done in digital).

 

Any strong negatives or positives of either approach?

[skipd]

Flourescent lighting can be a REAL PROBLEM as a light source for photography. It's because of the nature of the light - changing intensity and color 120 times every second.

 

Use flourescent lighting for ordinary space lighting, but I would recommend turning them off when using the space as a studio for photographs.

[jmf]

Slight sanity check

 

1. transistorized ballasts that come with most new fixtures "flicker" in the khz range, not 60 or 120 hz.

 

2. If your ambient light is within a few stops of your exposure and not matched to your main light, you'll see the color diffs in the shadow areas. Therefore, you either want to be able to dim/trim that light enough OR match it to within about 200K of your main light. Even "Natural" light changes color temp throughout the day, so trying to match it will be tough. My suggestion is halogen spots and dimmers. Some ballasts can be trimmed through a partial range (usually like 100-50%) which may be enough.

[john_sack]

Thanks for these responses. I had forgotten about the 60-120 cycles/sec!

 

When you suggest "halogen spots" what did you mean specifically?

 

I was imagining something like wall-mounted can lights that could be pointed up (to the ceiling and bounce) or down (for task lighting).

[jmf]

I was just thinking wall or ceiling mounted track lights on a dimmer.

[er1]

I have to voice a negative to your project. Do yourself a major favor and abandon the flourescent lighting approach. Do it right the first time. I have shot with mixed florescent lighting and only under protest.

[john_sack]

I know it is impolite to argue with people who are trying to provide information. But I want to be sure I understand what the problem is with fluorescents.

 

I raised the problem of flicker with the electrical contractor, and he said that the information about flicker at 60 cycles/sec is very very old, and that modern electronic ballasts flicker at 15,000 times/second. So he wondered how that could be a problem.

 

He said that using natural color bulbs (the 6280K and 94.5 CRI -- about the same color temp as my WhiteLightning strobes) would, he thought, deal with the color issue of mixing color temps.

 

So the question I'm left with is whether modern fluorescents that are color balanced to natural light are ok to use in a studio? I wouldn't use them in place of natural light.

 

The advantage to them is that they are cool and energy efficient and would be good for the other uses the studio will be put to. (The lights themselves are cheaper, and the fixtures are cheaper too than track lighting and such.)

 

Thanks to folks for giving me more info so I understand the problem I would be getting into.

 

John

[jmf]

Jack, if you re-read my post you'll see that I *said* that modern ballasts flicker in the kilohertz range. The problem, even with tubes that do have a high CRI and are close to your color temp, is that it's not a continuous spectrum (it's basicly 3 or more phosphors that emit overlaping light spectrum peaks, sort of like looking at a rnage of mountains). For many purposes this may not be an issue, but it's possible it *could* be at some point. Here's a suggestion: Don't put all the lights on the same switch. It costs a little more, but you'll be able to control the ambient light such that if you DO notice an effect, you can reduce the light w/o losing it completely. I'm guessing that unless you use very high ISO settings or long shutters, even moderate amounts of ambient light will have no effect compared to the flash output.