About Daylight Bulbs

[David Wilhelm]

I've been told to get Daylight bulbs, I've been told the K range on bulbs needs to be 5-5500. The bulbs i'm finding that say they are Daylight are 6500k, I'm told 6500 will make the pics blue. If the bulb is in the K range does it matter if it says DAYLIGHT or not? Thanks, Will

[Don Abele]

Will, here's a graphic I found a while ago that always helped me with color temps:

90970

If you notice, daylight is about 5500K, so a bulb at 6500K will have a bluish tone to it. The higher the number the cooler (bluer) the tone. Lower numbers are said to be warmer. I typically use CFL's at 5000K and find they are the most neutral in tone.

Be well,

Doc

[Don Eddard]

"Daylight" is more of a marketing term than anything else. Just go by the 5000 K to 5500 K range, and you'll be in the right ballpark.

[Jim Becker]

You may need to patronize a real lighting supplier or electrical supply to get bulbs in a specific range. In my experience, the home centers and other typical retailers don't really stock the variety of bulbs that are actually available. I did get some CFLs for the bathroom vanity lights in our addition that gave me the brightness and overall color I wanted, but were not the so-called "daylight" setups with the extra blue cast. They were somewhere close to 5K, but I don't recall exactly...maybe 4600 or something like that.

[Greg Ketell]

Mind you, 6500K isn't wayyy off. You camera on "shade" mode would probably be very happy with it. And if you use a grey card to set your custom white balance it doesn't matter what the K range is as long as all the bulbs are the same.

On my fishtank 4200K bulbs made it look pee yellow. 10,000K made it look "sky blue".

Heck, 6500K bulbs at Home Depot were $4 a piece or so. Buy 3 and see what you think. If you don't like it you haven't wasted much money. None if you then put them into your household lamps.

GK

[Steve Schlumpf]

David - the CFL bulbs that I picked up at our local Menards are 5900K and when I am taking the photos everything looks fine. Once I download and view the shots on the computer everything has a slight blue tint to it. I have learned to adjust the color through software but the next bulbs I get will be 5500K.