Should I switch to Flo and CFL

[Paul Cascio]

I need your advice. I have a set of Lowel DPs (7), and 2 Totas.

I'm thinking about setting up a studio in my finished basement and I'm concerned about heat, and fire hazards, not to mention tripping circuit breaks.

If I could find 100w and 250w bulbs for the DPs, I'd keep 'em but I most use flat (news type) lighting. I don't want/need Kinos, but that type in a generic brand would be good, and/or CFL lighting or a combo of the two.

Can I match CFL and FLO lighting temps? Does it matter?

What's a source of less expenive but quality lights of this type?

Thanks to all.

[Richard Andrewski]

Matching 3200K in a spiral self-ballasted CFL is tough. I'm not aware of any for sale in that color temp. Home Depot N:Vision is CRI 80 and comes in 2700K, 3500K, 5500K and 6400K. Going up from there you can find 5500K CFL spirals on Ebay pretty regularly. Generally, if the manufacturer doesn't even list CRI, I would stay away from it. Those are the ones given to lying about it if you ask them or saying something like "what's CRI?".

There's also 5900K daylight Full Spectrum lights from a number of sources like bluemax for instance.

http://www.bluemaxlighting.com/compa...ent_32_ctg.htm

From there you can look at other types such as the separate ballast kinds which cover a wide range of tubes from 21" to 48". Again, it can be hard to find 3200K to match tungsten in these too. When you get to the biax type (2G11 PL Lamps) then you can start finding 3200K and especially 5200 to 5600K more regularly. Even Home Depot many times has Philips Daylight tubes available in CRI 85 or even as high as 90.

[Chris Sorensen]

There's also these with a CRI of 91 and 5500K.

http://www.budgetlighting.com/store/...&ppinc=search2