[tuggie76]

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Hi, If I wanted to light the inside of a building with flash, but make it look like light bulb, what would I need?

Thanks

Tuggie 76

[VisualDarkness]

A suitable color filter to put in front of the flash. Check ebay or amazon, there are thousands of them.

[Gerbermiester]

This question might need some more clarification. Are you looking for the orangey colour that light bulbs produce, or are you looking for the texture of light that light bulbs produce?

Colour:
It depends on the type of light that already exists in the room. A camera flash has a colour temperature of around 6000K, Sunlight also has a colour temperature of about 6000K which looks like a cooler white light, incandescent (called 'tungsten' in Pentax lingo) has a colour temperature of around 2600K which is a warmer orange.
If you have fluorescent tubes, compact florescent bulbs, or LED lighting your room, a regular flash will give results that are the same colour temperature as your ambient lighting. You can then set your camera's white balance accordingly to create the colour you want in your photo.

If, however, your room is lit with an incandescent bulb and you want to use a flash you'll need to buy a piece of equipment called a 'CTO flash gel'. A set can be had for about $10 CAD. Here's an ebay link to some higher quality rosco gels.
If using gels, you place the tinted orange piece of plastic over top of your flash to match the orange tone given off by incandescent lights. Pretty simple stuff.

Texture:
If you are more concerned about casting shadows on your subjects, or the weird uneven lighting that a direct flash creates on people, the answer is also simple. Point your flashgun at the ceiling. Ceilings are typically white, and because they have a large surface area, the light looks softer and much more natural.

If you want to learn more about lighting check out the website of lighting guru David Hobby. He has a series of articles to teach the basics as well as some more advanced camera flash techniques

[ale_guy]

Do you mean the color of the light, or the shape of the illuminated area? To simulate the color, I would use a 1/2 CTO gel over the flash. Assuming you're using a speedlight, I'd use something like a round piece of tupperware or maybe a frosted globe from a light fixture to simulate the shape. Gary Fong (I think) makes something called a light sphere that might provide a similar effect.

You could also get a light bulb shaped flash that can be screwed into a lamp base. It's a flash, but will appear to the camera as a really bright lamp. All depends on what you want to do, I guess.

By the way, Strobist has lots of great information on using flash in many creative wyas.

[tuggie76]

Thanks guys, what it is, is that I want to photograph an old abandoned building but want to light the inside as if it's lit with bulbs.

I'll check out strobist as well.

Tuggie76

[civiletti]

If you have fluorescent tubes, compact florescent bulbs, or LED lighting your room, a regular flash will give results that are the same colour temperature as your ambient lighting.

That's over-simplification. Fluorescents and LED's come in different "color temperatures" and are not continuous spectrum, so some colors will render differently.

[civiletti]

Thanks guys, what it is, is that I want to photograph an old abandoned building but want to light the inside as if it's lit with bulbs.

I'll check out strobist as well.

Tuggie76

If there is little other light, use your flashes without filters and adjust color in post production. That way you preserve the amount of light you have to work with. Concentrate on placement of the flashes [where the building's lights would be] and diffusion [again, as close to original as you can].

[Gerbermiester]

That's over-simplification. Fluorescents and LED's come in different "color temperatures" and are not continuous spectrum, so some colors will render differently.

Yep, civiletti is correct, it is an over simplification. Be aware that some fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent bulbs are designed to cast a warmer, lower Kelvin light. Though there is hardly a "standard" colour temperature for fluorescent lights, more often than not, the light the camera picks up from fluorescents will be more bluish than incandescents so long as your shutter speed is long enough to allow a full oscillation of the output of the fluorescent tube.

Fluorescent lights actually project various colours of light over a very brief period of time which our eyes perceives as white light.(kind of the way a movie projector projects a series of still pictures and we perceive it as continuous motion). It should say the rate of oscillation right on the tubes themselves, usually 60hz or 120hz. Rule of thumb, if you are shooting under fluorescents, keep your shutter-speed at or under 1/60 second in order to have the camera consistently record "cool white" light. Next time your under a flourescent tube with your camera, snap a few pictures with your shutter speed above 1/125 of a second. You will probably see bands of different coloured light in your photo. Kinda neat, I think.

[VisualDarkness]

Yep, civiletti is correct, it is an over simplification. Be aware that some fluorescent tubes and compact fluorescent bulbs are designed to cast a warmer, lower Kelvin light. Though there is hardly a "standard" colour temperature for fluorescent lights, more often than not, the light the camera picks up from fluorescents will be more bluish than incandescents so long as your shutter speed is long enough to allow a full oscillation of the output of the fluorescent tube.

Fluorescent lights actually project various colours of light over a very brief period of time which our eyes perceives as white light.(kind of the way a movie projector projects a series of still pictures and we perceive it as continuous motion). It should say the rate of oscillation right on the tubes themselves, usually 60hz or 120hz. Rule of thumb, if you are shooting under fluorescents, keep your shutter-speed at or under 1/60 second in order to have the camera consistently record "cool white" light. Next time your under a flourescent tube with your camera, snap a few pictures with your shutter speed above 1/125 of a second. You will probably see bands of different coloured light in your photo. Kinda neat, I think.

Yeah, just look at tubes for aquarium lighting which range from around 2400k to over 20000k depending on model.

[wombat2go]

Compact Fluoro Lamps produce a light spectrum which is mostly time invariant. (The color does not change with brief periods of time)
Here is a link to a site showing the spectra of some CFL lamps (CFL, even though the links is "/led"
LEDs - Gallium Indium Nitride UV, violet, purple, blue, aqua, turquoise, green, white. Also Gallium Arsenide and others. New LED MUSEUM! GaN, InGaN, SiC, GaAs, GaP, GaAlP, ZnSe, flashlight, flashlights.

CFL lamps produce an amplitude flicker that is lower than incandescent lamps, and probably is too low to affect the camera exposure.
Here is a link to a paper where the CFL flicker was measured during steady voltage and during sags.
As shown, the steady flicker is at twice the voltage frequency and only about 10% of the average level (It looks tough to convert that to EV, but it that a only a fraction of a stop.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CEsQFjAG...,d.aWc&cad=rja

I use a tungsten incandescent lamp to test shutter speeds on oscilloscope and the particular lamp I use has a rather bad flicker of about 30%.
The level is dependent on the thermal inertia of the incandescent filament.

To answer Tuggie more specifically, the K-01 (and I suppose other newer cameras) have a sub menu to fine tune each white balance setting.
So for example you can select AWB and fine tune the color cast in the coordinates Green > Magenta and Amber > Blue
That only changes the camera jpg, not the raw.

[tuggie76]

To answer Tuggie more specifically, the K-01 (and I suppose other newer cameras) have a sub menu to fine tune each white balance setting.
So for example you can select AWB and fine tune the color cast in the coordinates Green > Magenta and Amber > Blue
That only changes the camera jpg, not the raw.

But won't this change the whole picture? I can only think that maybe I'd make 2 pictures and insert the lit area after suitable white balance adjustment.

Tuggie76

[tuggie76]

So I went out and bought a set of Honlphoto flash gels for around $20.00, they attach to the flash with velcro which needs an adaptor for the flash for another $12.00, but my wife made something with some scrap velcro for free!

As a test I set 2 flashes in my garden shed, this was taken in broad daylight but underexposed to make it look like night. I had to use 'full CTO' to get a noticable effect, maybe because it was light.

Thanks for the advise, I think I prefer this to playing around in Photoshop, being old school!

Tuggie76

[VisualDarkness]

Good result!

[wombat2go]

Looks just like a bare tungsten lamp inside there!

[dms]

Forgot the number (85B, 80A, ??)--but the filter to use tungsten film in daylight (5500K-->3200K). I hold the filter in front of the camera flash. I almost never use flash--but the few times I did it was likely 50% of the time this way. I used in manual and with the guide number--adjusting for 2/3 stop due to the filter. But this assumes regular incandescent lighting.