Fluorescent

[filmny500]

What do you do in situations where you have a abundance of overhead fluorescent lighting like in an office? I'm shooting a short student project so obviously we don’t have the budget to use corrected bulbs. I have some 4x4 kinos that I will use for key should I gel them plus green? When I checked the location I didn't see any sort of green coming from them (like you can with some lights) but then again I don’t have a color meter. This is on film, what would be best to do? I was reading that a lot of new tubes coming out our color temp at tug or daylight and get rid of the green.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

You need to open up one of those overhead fluorescent fixtures and read the label on the tube, though you can usually tell if they are close to daylight or tungsten.

Modern offices would not use corrected tubes, though good Cool Whites (close to daylight) or Warm Whites don't have as much green in them as they used to... but they still have some green in them.

The simplest method is to get more of the same tubes as are in the overheads and put them into your Kinoflos, though that only tends to work if they are 4' T12 tubes -- many offices use T8 tubes, U-tubes, etc. Then at least you may need to get some Cool Whites in the Kino T12 configuration. I find that the cheaper the tube is at the hardware store, the more green it has in it.

Otherwise, you could try doing this by eye, adding 1/2 Plus Green and 1/4 CTO to a daylight Kino to match a Cool White tube -- maybe try taking a digital still photo to see how well it matches.