ampguy
Veteran
Besides the "Reveal" line of bulbs, does anyone use "Full Spectrum" lighting indoors? What are the usage and benefits?
Ted, I've been using them for years. Great for the drab grey winters of northern Taiwan.
If you're in North America there is a huge variety of full spectrum lighting, including halogen, tungsten, and flourescent. There are also differences in wavelengths covered, with some being therapeutic and even allowing excellent plant growth. I'm limited in my choices to bulbs made in france. Very happy with them.
I believe you are referring to the newer style of fluorescent bulbs that are designed to replace standard incandescent bulbs, right?
Click on the light for a link to a blog where the use of these bulbs is discussed.
These are referred to as 'full spectrum' CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lights) because they put out light at something like 6500K (Kelvin), which is more-or-less 'daylight' white, as opposed to the 3800K yellowish-white that standard incandescent bulbs put out.
If those are the ones you mean, I love 'em. They are inexpensive, they put out a nice real white light, and they don't get hot like the older style continuous lighting.
Their one real drawback is that it takes a bunch of them to get enough light on any but tabletop shots. Not a huge deal, but it can be bothersome in a DIY setup. Some commercial light makers are already making larger wattage 'daylight' CFL and grouping them together in lighting stands with softboxes and snoots and so on to make them more 'pro-friendly' right off the bat, but they're not cheap.
I have a bunch of them, and I use them with those cheap aluminum clip-on work lights that you can buy at hardware stores like Lowes and Home Depot (they cost about $5 to $9 USD each). I clip them on light stands or whatever I have handy, and with a nice piece of white hobby paper, I've got an instant tabletop product setup. Great for selling stuff on eBay, and less expensive than the $150 light boxes others sell.
Here is something someone else did and put the setup on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/erica_marshall/2239562643/
That's kind of like mine, but i don't bother with the light tent.
I find them a bit hard to use for portraiture, mainly because they don't put out a huge amount of light - so it does take a bunch of them. But again, they're cheap, the last a long time, and they don't get hot, so it could be worth the tradeoff if you're on a low budget and you're a DIY kind of guy when it comes to lighting.
The 'Daylight' feature is not as important if you're shooting digital and can set a custom white balance, but it does help if you're shooting film, or if you don't have custom white balance or just don't want to mess with it.
OK, I see. If you're referring to the GE "Reveal" line of so-called 'Full Spectrum Lighting', I have tried them and I did not care for them. To me, they were more blue than white, and my camera's white balance was completely lost when set to 'auto'. I do not have a color-meter, so setting a custom white balance based on whatever temperature these things are was out of the question for me. I googled and found some guy who claimed he emailed GE and asked, their reply was, "Reveal lamps have a color temperature of approximately 2850 degrees Kelvin and a CRI of 75."
I don't think I'd be interested in trying them again. Very happy with my gaggle of high-CRI, high-K CFL bulbs at present.
I have to use a custom WB for most all indoor lights, even in a room of flourescents, and with 3 presets for flourescents, still need custom. Also need the custom with sodium lamps in school gyms/auditoriums.