Interior 'daylight' needed, any ideas?

Jim10000

Hi!

This doesn't exactly have to do with photography, but I thought someone here might be able to help, so I hope you don't mind...

I need to light a room (studio) with as close to daylight light as is possible. I've come across 'daylight bulbs' in art shops, but have found them not to be bright enough, so, does anyone know of any more sophisticated equipment I could use for this?

Thanks a lot.

digitalbeginner

You can use White Balance to help correct the yellow light that Tungsten Bulbs give off (makes the room hot though).

See if your camera has a "tungsten" or "indoor" White Balance setting and see if this corrects the orange tinge.

Some cameras, mostly SLRs will allow you to set a custom white balance. Simply point the camera at a white sheet of paper, zoom in so the camera sees only the paper and then click on set custom white balance. The camera reads the colour tint off the white paper and adjusts the white in all future shots under this setting with that specific lighting setup so that the colour looks correct.

If you don't have custom white balance you could try coloured gels (thin sheets of plastic used by Videographers). You should at least have "Indoor White Balance" anyway, try this first and then see if the colour is corrected to your liking.

A more advanced way would be to shoot in RAW and adjust the white balance there. This can be time consuming if you're shooting more than a few shots though.

Hope this helps.

Jim10000

Thanks for that digitalbeginner, but I don't actually want the room to be close to daylight for taking photographs - its for painting.

But what you mentioned about gels is interesting... where could I get some? and can I cover any type of bulb with them and get 'daylight'?

If that worked, is there any specialst kind of lights I should be using (maybe particularly bright ones)?

digitalbeginner

This link brings you to a UK distributer of gels for video lights http://www.cotech-uk.com/Filters.aspx

Video lights are essentially tungsten lights and are typically 500 watt ar 1,000 watt. You could try these gels with the ordinary tungsten floodlights you can buy from most DIY stores or buy the more expensive dedicated video lights. Conns Cameras and the Camera Centre's around Dublin do Video Equipment, you may get lighting there.

Jim10000

that's great Digitalbeginner, thanks a lot!