Matching a location's soft white fluorescents

Tom More

Tom More

Member
I shot a conference speaker this past weekend at a nice hotel. I expected there to be installed fluorescent lighting so I came with my fluorescent softbox, etc. Come to find out the hotel's installed lighting was a soft white fluorescent at about 3000K which didn't go so well with mine at 5000K. I suddenly realized this is probably the way a lot of commercial buildings will be going in the future (since people tend to like soft white). Anyone know a retrofit for 5000K bulbs without having to replace them all or wrap everything in CTO?

Tom
Restrung Lefty Media
 
I did end up having to mix and with a little correction in post it worked out ok. I was hoping there was a magic bullet that would prevent having to carry a whole 'nother set of bulbs. I think you're telling me there isn't:-)
 
Unless you can scout in advance - there's just a million possibilities, and then you throw in less-maintained places with a decade's worth of bulb varieties.

I shot some testimonials for a restaurant chain recently with no time to scout - all LEDs on tracks. Kinda-sorta tungsten color (probably 'warm whites') with a sickly blue tinge when balanced to tungsten. And a lot of daylight coming in (and a rainy day out). The lights were kind of impressive - a lot of output and really focused spots. So each table had a blown-out white circle. We started aiming 'em with c-stand arms while we stood on chairs. I just used 4x4 and 4x8 scrim jim frames with big open-faced tungstens for the subjects. Didn't look "bad", and it was for an investor show so the client thought it was fine. Fair amount of post on the skin tones - the walls were green!
 
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