CFL Lighting = green tint??
 

Hi there I am looking at CFL lighting options such as Interfit pro lite 9. I will film HDV interviews basically. Will I get a nasty pale green tint in my video as a result?

That's what I heard......


cheers

Depends on the CFL chosen. I use the nVision CFL units from Home Depot, and there is no green tint at all. Beautiful color.

As Perrone indicated, light sources vary in their CRI -- color rendering index. That's basically a measure of how well the source reproduces color compared to a theoretical ideal. Bulbs and tubes marketed for video or photography will have the CRI on the box. Mass market lights at your local hardware store may or may not have it listed, and may or may not have an acceptable CRI for video work.

Historically, incandescent lights had a high (>90 CRI on a 0-100 scale) and fluorescents generally had a low CRI, making them a poor choice for video. Newer flos now often have a >90 and of course are widely used with excellend results. So the trick is to know your particular bulb/tube's CRI.

Thanks. the CRI information does not even exist on the manufacturer websites for Interfit or Bowens for exmaple. Is it normally written on the bulbs?

It varies. I've seen it actually marked on the metal base of a consumer light bulb before, and in other situations it is just unobtainable by mortals. I suppose that if the CRI matters for the marketing of the bulb, and the number is good, it goes on the light and/or the packaging. If either is not true, AFAIK there's no requirement for the manufacturers to publicize unimpressive CRI information.

If you don't mix the CFLs with other lights, a custom white balance will solve that. If you need to match them to other lights, cover them with magenta Roscoe gels, but that will also reduce their lighting power.

A custom white balance will not solve the issue of a green spike or any other spike in one portion of the light spectrum. If this were true, minus-green gels would not exist. In professional video lit by only office fluorescent, the green tint was still there. It was not until we got high CRI fluo bulbs that this went away.

People would not be paying a premium for kino tubes if the problem was solvable with a custom white balance.

A variety of professional bulbs are out there. Lowel fluorescents use Osram. You can look at Richard's site, coollights.biz for the ones he uses.

Oh yeah, Osram sells their CFLs in quite wide variety from totally warm to cool white. I once did an integrated lightning solution with those warm ones from Osram. Bring your cam along to the shop and see if any of the CFL tubes will output the correct light with daylight white balance, bring a sheet of white paper along if you don't have an WB card of some sort.

T