Mer's and other ambient light mavens,

Does anyone have any experience shooting indoors in ambient light when the house is lit with the new GE Reveal bulbs? The light is much more like outdoors than tungsten. Outdoor film? Filters?

Dan

-- Dan Roe (roedj@hotmail.com), April 03, 2002

Answers

Shoot , Fuji films handles the multible colour temps better then kodak or agfa , and a good printer can pull a good skin tone out of a tugstin shot with fuji press .

Tried to find the colour temp GE Reveal bulb but couldn't find

-- Charles C. Stirk Jr. (ccstirkjr@yahoo.com), April 03, 2002.

I've picked up a pack of the Reveal bulbs but haven't run a test yet. I suspect they're much closer to a 3400K tungsten photoflood than to daylight. (Standard incandescent bulbs are much yellow/orange than tungsten photofloods.)

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), April 03, 2002.

Short answer, no. you might try GE web site (as hope???)

I find it rather difficult, even in manufacturer's brochures or web sites, to find color temperatures -- daylight fluorescents that are not quite daylight, others "blue light" a little beyond, very little actual color temps. Some, like ge/sylvania, express it only for certain bulbs, maybe like "pro" films versus consumer films. Anyone know a brand/bulb color temp chart? Some of the web sites have color temps, but, again, seemingly only some bulbs.

Does taking daylight slide film and then holding color compensating filters up provide a way of checking? Finally, I/you may have to re-calibrate, but I found an incident meter (an old Gossen LunaPro), with readings through red, then blue filters, subtracting the difference, gave a crude, but workable color temp meter. If you consider the stop difference (which is logrythmic subtraction = division or ratios) is a ratio of the red/blue intensity, it makes some sense (a real color meter has (typically) three wavelengths, I think green the third). I wrote all the stuff down for "when I was caught without", but never have any of it with me when I am caught without. If anyone wants to try some curve - fitting, not a bad exercise. I've not tried same with the leica meter, but it was roughly linear in the typical visual range -- low end a standard 2800 tungsten, a 3200(3400?), and a daylight gel over tungsten - 5500. That's how I know some "daylight" bulbs are 4500 or so.

-- L Smith (lacsmith@bellsouth.net), April 03, 2002.