The Effects of Fluorescent Lighting on Photography

Video Transcript

"This is Mark Bowers from bowersphotography.com in Utah and I want to talk about the effects of fluorescent lighting in photography. You can buy these different, there's lots of different fluorescent lights, this particular one is a daylight balance fluorescent lights. However, most fluorescent lights, the biggest concern that we have with them is they tend to be kind of to the green spectrum. And so, I use fluorescent lights if I can, but I have to color balance very much to the green spectrum. This daylight balance one is a little bit more to the blue spectrum which is great with daylight and if you have some daylight windows coming in and with this daylight fluorescent color, then that works really well. There's some fluorescents that are a little bit bigger and the quality of the light that comes off them is very soft. Whereas if you can have a small fluorescent like this, the quality of this light is a little bit more harsh. The shadows are a little bit sharper and the highlights are a little bit sharper. What I usually do with my fluorescents is I buy eight foot tubes with a daylight colored balances and I put them in my studio and I use it for a background color balance and it works really well with my flashes which are also daylight color balance. So that works really well for me. That's what is creating this outside blue ambiance, is the difference between an incandescent light and fluorescent lights."