6500K or 5500K

strobemonkey

strobemonkey

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Hi

Which one is better to use with my light tent?

Thank you
 
What's the question behind the question?

If you're using flash then the colour temperature will be around 5500, if you're using tungsten it will be around 3200 3400 (in theory, it actually varies a lot depending on voltage fluctuations) but my guess is that you're planning to use fluorescent, which are commonly sold both in 5500 and 6500.

5500 is theoretically better but if you're shooting on digital it's easy to correct colour cast.

What really matters though is the colour rendition index (CRI) which needs to be as high as possible and certainly above 90. Most cheap lights don't achieve that, and the lights rated at 6500 tend to be household (not photographic) lights that have very low CRI figures.

If the CRI is too low then some colours will reproduce very badly, and this cannot be corrected on computer - so make your choice on CRI value and nothing else
 
Garry Edwards said:
What's the question behind the question?

If you're using flash then the colour temperature will be around 5500, if you're using tungsten it will be around 3200 3400 (in theory, it actually varies a lot depending on voltage fluctuations) but my guess is that you're planning to use fluorescent, which are commonly sold both in 5500 and 6500.

5500 is theoretically better but if you're shooting on digital it's easy to correct colour cast.

What really matters though is the colour rendition index (CRI) which needs to be as high as possible and certainly above 90. Most cheap lights don't achieve that, and the lights rated at 6500 tend to be household (not photographic) lights that have very low CRI figures.

If the CRI is too low then some colours will reproduce very badly, and this cannot be corrected on computer - so make your choice on CRI value and nothing else
Click to expand...

Thank s, I'll be looking on that CRI value..

this
and
this

are the ones I'm looking at.

Edit:
The second link has a CRI of 76 so not good then.
 
76 is way too low to give accurate colour rendition and the first one doesn't even tell you what it is.

Personally I'd avoid both
 
The CRI rating of 76 is way to low for decent photographic use. It needs to be 90+ preferably 95 or higher.

Daylight, tungsten etc have a rating of 100 so you need to get near that figure. I think the coolight bulbs Interfit supply are about this value, but best check with them
 
Chappers said:
The CRI rating of 76 is way to low for decent photographic use. It needs to be 90+ preferably 95 or higher.

Daylight, tungsten etc have a rating of 100 so you need to get near that figure. I think the coolight bulbs Interfit supply are about this value, but best check with them
Click to expand...

Personally I'd be interested in knowing the CRI of the Chinese fluorescents sold under the Interfit name but can't find any info on their website.

In practical terms, amateur photographers buy fluorescents because they think they're a good idea and because they're cheap. I'd like to be wrong, but I would be very surprised if any of the cheap units are rated higher than about 92 CRI, higher figures are possible but tend to be expensive and out of budget except for TV studios and similar. As I understand it from a physicist friend, 100 isn't achievable at any cost.
 
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