 Michelle Campbell |
Film Types VS Lighting I am trying to research what the best lighting equipment would be for me for internal lighting. I am having problems grasping the concepts of the different lighting vs films and would prefer to stick to a film I'm comfortable with. It is APS (Which I believe is daylight film) 200 speed color fugi film and APS 400 black and white film. What lighting works with typical "daylight" films for completely controled indoor lighting situations? Is there a special "bulb" type that would work with it? I would really appreciate any help anyone would give me on this as for some reason, I am having difficulty grasping the lighting concept. Very frustrating for me! Thank you, Michelle C.
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John A. Lind |
Michelle, All APS color film is "daylight" balanced. You can use B/W +400 (Kodak's B/W APS film) without worrying about color balance. When you have it developed, ensure the lab can use a B/W paper. Some will try to print it on color paper, and it is difficult if not impossible to keep the prints from having a color cast to them. Kodak makes a special B/W print paper that can be used in color print machinery. [Note: Unlike "true" B/W, the film and print paper mentioned are "color" in both structure and processing required to develop them. They have three color layers, and their processing chemistry is identical to color negative films and color negative print papers. Instead of creating the three negative colors, all the color layers render shades of gray.] Household incandescent bulbs with tungsten filaments (including halogen lamps) have much less blue and much more red and yellow than daylight does from the sun. Fluorescent lamps are very difficult to cope with. In general they create a sickly greenish cast on daylight color film. However, it varies greatly among bulb types (warm, soft, cool white, etc.) and manufacturers. This makes trying to correct them to daylight using filters very difficult. For indoors, you can try replacing some of your normal lights with some special ones that are much closer to daylight. These lamps are made for primarily for indoor plant growing and some industrial applications such as comparision of paint color formulations. They are much more expensive than normal household incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. A large home improvement store ususally has at least the incandescent bulbs. They have a heavy blue coating on them. Caution: these are *much* hotter than normal bulbs because of the blue coating. Be careful if you use them, especially the higher wattage ones, and heed the heat warnings on the packages. They may not be perfect for photographic use, but they are much closer to daylight color balance. There is some variation from bulb to bulb, and some color shift occurs as the filament ages. Fluorescent bulbs also come in 5500K and 6500K color temperatures. They run much cooler compared to incandescent bulbs. These are not be perfect for photographic use either but are closer to daylight than standard ones. It's for a different reason though. "Discharge" type lamps put out "spikes" of specific colors. Flourescent, mercury vapor and sodium vapor lamps all fall into this category. Our eyes average this across a wider portion of the spectrum, but film doesn't. They shouldn't produce the sickly green cast, but there may be a slight bit more blue; more like indirect daylight in shade (skylighting) or on an overcast day, than in direct sunlight. -- John
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