Florescent Bulb Recommendations

egproductions

egproductions

Veteran
For various reasons I need to leverage the house lights (florescent balasts) of a client of mine. To make matters more difficult, I need to incorporate an HDTV into the shot which means lowering the the brightness and matching the white balance of a TV.

While the native white balance of the TV is probably on the daylight side of things, there is the option to adjust the temperature.

Current Florescent bulb: Sylvania 20901 - FP28/835/ECO PENTRON Straight T5
TV model: Sharp LC-60LE650U

With the above in mind, I was wondering if there are better florescent bulbs I can buy. Something with a higher CRI that doesn't have a green tint to them. I'm thinking 3200K (and match the TV to this) rather than daylight florescents because this is for live events and thinking that daylight florescents might annoy people. but I'm open daylight if it makes sense.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!
 
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I see that they also make LED replacements for the T5 Size. Right now there is a dimmer for the house lights, will the LED versions also dim?
 
It's been my experience in the last few years(5-10) that most flo's used in commercial buildings/spaces are actually pretty good. Definitely not the old nasty green flo's that we used to encounter. Without seeing them or knowing how to read that model number of the lights, I'm guessing they're in the 4300 neighborhood. I'd probably try to get the lights and tv as close to each other without swinging one or the other to the extreme end. Most "TV's" are around (should be)6500K. Do you know how much adjustment the TV has? Meaning how "warm" can you adjust the picture. It's obviously easier to adjust one TV to a specific temp than swapping out lots of overhead flo tubes. I'd go shoot some tests and see if you can get everything to match "in-camera" without having to go through the trouble of swapping out lots of tubes, first. And regarding 3200K tubes vs. daylight tubes, when it comes to overhead flo's, I don't think it's gonna matter, with regards to peoples reaction to them, because overhead flo's seem to have the same "feeling" regardless of temp.
 
Thank you, unfortunately the florescent bulbs they are currently using have a slight green tinge to them. Trying to find ones that won't have that.
 
From this I would assume you're after a 28-watt T5 fluorescent tube with good colour rendering.

You might want to try something like the Philips Master series (linky) which are advertised as having CRI over 90, which is promising but not conclusive, so test. They come in 4000, 5000 and 6500K and various lengths and wattages; double check which you need.

Selection of T5 is not as good as the more conventional T8, sadly, but I think these should be a good place to start.
 
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