CFL's and 35mm film

[electricalperson]

i noticed that CFL's put a pretty horrible light on film. is there any way to fix this without using incandescent lamps?

 

[Dwig]

Yes and no.

There is absolutely no good way to fix the color emitted from common CFL lamps. Its not primarily a balance problem as much as a missing color problem.

There are filters that can do an adequate job of fixing the modest red/blue balance mismatch along with the green/magenta balance mismatch. These can't provide the missing colors resulting from the gaps in the CFL's emission spectrum. They also can't precisely deal with the green/magenta problem as the CFL's green spike is very sharp and narrow and the filters can't be that precise. Additionally, CFLs and conventional fluorescents vary substantially from brand to brand and model to model so no one filter fits all.

There are some special fluorescents, both conventional and CFL, that do a better job of emitting a full spectrum. These can be used successfully with film for most situations but still may require slight filterization to balance. These lamps have a CRI (Color Rendering Index) of 90 or higher in addition to a roughly 5000k balance. Even so, these don't work well when critical color reproduction is required.

 

[Seefutlung]

Go B&W