Interiour lighting, do you have "energy saver" bulbs where you are?

Question

I'm finding I carry light bulbs in my kit now......

Here in NZ we have energy saver lights (started appearing about a year ago or more), they have 2 colour temps..... -1. cool white (daylight 5500k roughly)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellas2008/2779225333/

2 - warm - (3200k like tungsten)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellas2008/2780081410/in/photostream/

(both shot at 5500k so you can see the color temp differences)

ok the question, do you have these lights where you are? how do you deal with them? eg if one room had white and the next is spilling yellow into the room, what do you do?

sometimes i work with it, sometimes i change the bulbs to suit

your experiences and advice please, thanks

a

Answer 1

Yes I've had this problem and I don't even shoot interiors. I mostly have it when I shoot people in-doors (parties and the like), I think the easiest is just to change them temporarily (That's what people mostly do with flourescent light, although I hear it's possible to blend flourescent light and flash). When I shoot people I simply turn of the other lights or use a powerful flash that more or less nuetralises all the other light.  

Answer 2

If this becomes an issue when shooting interiors, you can just replace the lights for the shoot to make them match each other.  Which you change depends upon the count.  Back in the days of shooting interiors with 4x5 view cameras, we used to change out ALL the fluorescent tubes before the shoot and used either a FLD or FLB filter and shot at dusk or dawn to get some amazing window images.

We have here in the States many colours of those energy saving bulbs ... even black light.

Answer 3

Oh bother !!!

I've found color temp varies with bulbs from the same package for crying out loud. The CFL's are great, but getting two or more of the same color is difficult at best. Perhaps a solution here in the digital age would be to set the appropriate color balance for each of the two bulbs, take two shots, then blend them in PS as layers. Similar to a multiple exposure bracket series for a HDR composite.  I've never tried it, but my instinct tells me it should blend ok. Shooting in RAW would be your best bet, where you can controll the overall color temp from each shot in post processing...

Great Question !!!