"Daylight" florescent tubes
 

I'm a newbee interested in doing some basic interviewing. I have a couple of old halogen "video lights" I found at a garage sale, but I understand that the color temperature will be lower than regular daylight, and I don't think the 2 lights will be sufficient to provide the Key, fill, back, and backround light I think I'm supposed to have. And I don't want to mix with daylight or other tunsten sources.

While at Home Depot I saw some florescent tubes that were called "Daylight" tubes and listed a color temp of 6500K, and they only cost about $7 a piece.

Would it look better to build light fixtures with these florescent tubes rather than the halogen lights? They also sell florescent bulbs that fit in regular sockets that are listed as "Daylight" at 6500K.

I edit on my Mac with Final Cut Express, and my I know how to use the manual white balance on my Sony TRV 950.

Rob, the advantage of a fluourescent setup is that you can swap out the tubes depending on the needs of your shoot without resorting to gelling (which cuts down the output of the fixture). So you can have daylight tubes for shooting someone against a window, or regular (aka tungsten or incandescent) balanced tubes for mixing with halogens or standard film lights. The other nice thing is that they produce a pretty soft light, which is good for interviews.

I haven't done it myself, but I don't see why these tubes wouldn't work for you. Some fluourescents exhibit a bit of green, which you can white balance out (but then your other lights or the ambient daylight might go a little magenta).

Color temperature (i.e., 5600k) is one factor to consider, but the other is CRI (color rendering index). The higher the CRI number, the more accurate the fluorescent lights will render color. Good CRI values are around 95+, anything around 84 or lower is not going to be full spectrum and will not render color very well.

Thanks for the info.

So I want to get bulbs with a temperature close to daylight AND a CRI of 95+ (or is temperature irrelevant if CRI is 95+?)

Is there a particular brand or store that sells this kind of bulb?

Thanks again.

You need both, proper color temperature (5600k or 3200k) and a high CRI. You can get genuine Kino Flo lamps that meet both specs for around $22 at B&H.