"Key" or "Fill" in fluorescent office

M

magicdavek

Well-known member
In a well lit office, how do you provide extra light on the faces? Obviously the trusty tungsten lighting is out. My fluoro worklight is out because it is daylight corrected and not like typical office fluoro lighting. Any practical suggestions?


(Practical meaning, inexpensive and fairly portable)
 
Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

You can use tungsten lights, worklights, whatever you want. If the color doesn't match, use some color-correcting gels to get it to match.
 
Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

I use my customized fluoro worklight for that purpose a lot.
Daylight or cool white office fluorescents will only read a tad warmer than my light...they actually balance out very well.
If you bring it in close it can provide some nice modeling to faces instead of just filling in the "racoon eyes" from overhead fluorescent lighting. If you need it a bit warmer, just use a 1/4 CTO.
Ken
 
Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

I do have a couple of sets of CTO and CTB gels, but haven't tried them in a fluorescent environment. What strength (if that's the right word) would balance to fluorescent?. I have full, half, quarter, and eighth).

Also, I have the round, reflector photo flood light fixtures. I was thinking about putting the consumer level fluoros that screw into a normal socket in them. I think the highest I've seen is equivalent to a 100 watt. Maybe a couple (or few) of those JUST outside camera view may help. Does this sound like it will work?
 
Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

Those screw in globes actually go up to a 200w "equivalent", but they are pretty warm in color...about 2700-2800k. OK as a fill under "normal" incandescent lit interiors.
For the office use you are describing, stick with those Fluorex worklights if possible as they put out a much closer daylight match; easily warmed up a tad with 1/4 or 1/2 CTO.
Check the balance through a monitor and adjust to taste.
Ken
 
Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

Re: "Key" or "Fill" in fluores

You can get CFL screw-in lamps in almost any color temperature you can think of. TCPI Springlamps come in 6500, 5100, 3500, 3100, 2700, and probably more. Some of the lamps can reach as much as 300 watts "equivalent".

What color correction gel would be appropriate? Well, unfortunately, that's impossible to answer. The lamps in the office could be almost any temperature from 2700 up to 6500 or even more. They could be an oddball temperature like 4800. And they may have (or in fact probably DO have) a nasty green spike in their color spectrum.

So, this is where a color meter comes in handy. A color meter tells you what color temperature the light is that it reads, and newer color meters can do so on two axes: red/blue and cyan/magenta. Something like a new IIIF meter will tell you that if you're using tungsten light, then you'd need to use a 1/4 CTO and a 1/2 MinusGreen -- really amazing little tools. But also very expensive.

The no-budget way would be for you to turn on the overhead fluorescents and take a white balance and lock it. Then turn off the overheads, and point your fill lights at the white card, and look at what color it is delivering, and then try various combinations of CTO, CTB, and PlusGreen or MinusGreen (green or magenta) sheets until that paper looks white again.

CFL's in scoop lights is an okay idea, but it depends on the CFL -- some have better color rendition than others, and some have very noisy (buzzing) ballasts which may interfere with your audio recording (or, perhaps with a wireless mic frequency I guess).
 
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