Sodium Lights

[archangel]

gong to do a fashion shoot next month at a farm....on first inspection , I found a really interesting barn......it has lots of Sodium style flood lights and was wondering if anyone had every used these lights to assist on a shoot... I think with a little ingenious tweaking with the lights I could maybe get a decent image....Will be using the strobes for most of the shoot.....but would like to try to do something with these lights....

 

[Phil V]

I think, depending on the exact type of light, you might struggle due to the limited spectrum.

 

[archangel]

They are the sort you see at industrial sites, sort of yellow look..... very edgy urban light.... not sure if I can do much with them but always open to ideas.

 

[Garry Edwards]

They are discontinuous spectrum lights - fine for special effects but totally unsuitable if you want to get accurate colour rendition. The 'yellow look' is neither here nor there, that can be corrected - but the inability to render both ends of the visible colour spectrum can't be corrected.

It's a bit like the green cast fluorescent lights, but worse. The green colour can be removed, but it's a discontinuous spectrum that doesn't contain magenta, therefore some colours are always going to be false.

 

[archangel]

They are discontinuous spectrum lights - fine for special effects but totally unsuitable if you want to get accurate colour rendition. The 'yellow look' is neither here nor there, that can be corrected - but the inability to render both ends of the visible colour spectrum can't be corrected.

It's a bit like the green cast fluorescent lights, but worse. The green colour can be removed, but it's a discontinuous spectrum that doesn't contain magenta, therefore some colours are always going to be false.

Garry Thank you for that Information....I appreciate it.

 

[HoppyUK]

The more modern sodium lights, pinkish-yellow rather than amber, can look kinda acceptable but never truly accurate. If you're looking for good fashion colours, you won't get that.

However, I think that when you take a meter reading, you'll find the light level is very low anyway, so getting that to work alongside flash, well, it won't even register in the exposure.