I'm curious if you put any special thought into the light bulbs you use in your home, in order to better accentuate pictures hanging from your wall(s).
Right now I have some fairly cheapo CCFL bulbs that are supposedly daylight, but look a little green to me now (do CCFLs color shift over their lifetime?). I have heard you can buy higher quality ones though, that actually do have a more natural coloration.
Or, there are those tungsten bulbs that supposedly have a better color balance. But the downside is that they use up more energy.
Look for CFLs with a high CRI (color rendering index). The ones I use are rated at CRI 91, and were about $8 each in 13 watt (60 watt equivalent) size.
I got them at the local Ace hardware, but couldn't find them at the Lowes/Home Depot.
Most galleries will use halogen or similar lighting. In my experience, CFLs will do strange things to photos. Even the ones that have a warm cast will still render things strange. It may have to do with the fact that they are not showing a full spectrum of light, and that gets further changed by the warm tone that's added to them.
When I bring my prints to the guy who does my framing, there are halogen spots pointing down on the counter. The photos look absolutely amazing in that light.
gdonovan wrote:
I'm shooting with natural light and energy efficient bulbs. Do energy efficient bulbs give off natural daylight? If not, what color?
It depends on what kind of "energy efficient bulbs" you are using?
As I said in my first post, you want bulbs with a high CRI for natural-looking light.
Fluorescent bulbs do not emit continuous spectra, therefore they are never very close to "natural daylight" in that most of the red and all the near infrared spectrum is missing.
Mixing fluorescent bulbs with daylight is generally asking for trouble. I tried it, and my shadows had a green cast that I could not correct for.
