color temp for work lights?

Cephalectomy

Active member
Hey, I know this is probably mentioned somewhere but after searching with no definite answer what I was wondering is what color temperature do work lights tend to be? I've got some britek lights i ordered and I wanted to use some Work lights for background fill light, but I'm wondering if the color temperature will be close enough to mix these lights, if not what color gel would i need to fix this? The britek lights are 3200K (I'm sure most know this though). :) Thanks for the help!
 
They are usually around 3K, but the tolerances for those are a little broader. For what you are using, they should be fine if you white balance.
 
The color temp is directly related to the place of mfg. Most of the cheap work lights come with cheap bulbs that color meter around 2800 kelvin. Some even have an orange shift. Weird. Best thing is to pull the stock bulbs and replace them with Silvania or GE. They're pretty close to 3200 K.
 
All modern incandescents work just fine if you white balance to them. Yeah, they're slighty warm, but if you white balance to them, you have perfectly white light. No need to go to the expense and hassle of changing out the globes.

Sorry, didn't read the part about the Briteks. Just white balance to your subject key's source (Briteks). The Home Depot lights may go slightly warm, but I'm sure you wouldn't even notice a color temp shift by eye without whipping a meter out. If you do need to correct the Home Depot lights, you could try a 1/8th CTB gel over the Home Depot lights (be careful not to melt the gels on 'em) to "cool" their temperature ("raise" numerically) a bit.
 
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what is the proper way of mounting gels or diffusion with those work lights? I use mine when I am working on my car in the garage. I usually only have 1 of the 2 lights on at a time and it can put out some serious heat! There would no way possible to attach a gel without it burning up. I would have to place something 1-2 feet away from the light or something which is weird because I have a 1000 watt Arri light and I can attach gels and diffusion to the barn doors and it won't burn the gels...at least not right away anyway.
 
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