Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Lighting tests

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my search for some new daylight spotlights. After a host of helpful suggestions (Thanks for these) I bought some bulbs and decided to test them

The setup involved putting a pair of bulbs in the photo spotlights in my mini-booth. My Cannon G12 was set up to shoot at F8 for 1/6th of a second. Each image is show as original on the left and with the colour balance corrected by Paint Shop Pro 7 using the white background as a guide, on the right. The relevant bulb is shown in the centre.

First, conventional 60W incandescent bulbs. Unsurprisingly, the colours are horrible, even after correction with a definite purple tinge.

Conventional Bulb


Next, 60W Bell Natural Daylight incandescent bulbs. For a blue bulb, the results are still very brown.

Blue Bulb

60W blue spotlights. This is my current setup for both modelling and photography. The hottest bulb on test, or at least the only one that required me to use a handkerchief to unscrew them after a few seconds use.

Blue Spotlight

Fiesta 20W Energy saving daylight bulbs. These have the advantage of giving an equivalent of 100w rather than the 60 of all the others. They are 3cm longer than the others which could be an issue in some situations.

Daylight Energy Saver
 
 
The clear winner is the energy saving bulb. There is next to no change after the correction which has to be good news for photography. The saving on electric juice is always a good idea and they won't get toastie unlike the others.
 
Thanks to James Finister for the suggestion. I'll be stocking up on a few more of these while the price is low I think.

3 comments:

mog said...

A 'really useful' guide this Mr P. I have been meaning to source some more daylight bulbs for a few years now. Surprising that the energy saver was the winner on this test.
Could you point us at a place to get these?

Phil Parker said...

The link in the Fiesta name will take you to the website. Hope this helps.

Stuart Firth said...

The energy saving daylight bulbs look great. I've been using daylight fluorescent tubes on my layout for a while - I assume they are the same colour temperature.