Tungsten and Fluorescent Lighting

3rd February 2013

Tungsten Lighting

This living room is lit by tungsten lights. Looking outside through the window, the tungsten light appears very yellow and the daylight seems blue. Exposure meter readings within the room vary considerably because the type of lighting is an uneven light.At ISO 100 I recorded shutter speeds of between 20 seconds and 0.7 seconds and would need to use a tripod to take a picture.


Auto White Balance              Daylight White Balance      Tungsten White Balance

F8 1.5 sec ISO100 Focal Length 24mm 10/1/12 16:21

The notable differences between the 3 pictures are:

• Tungsten shows more contrast between the colours
• Daylight is too yellow
• Auto white balance looks very similar to daylight
• Even with daylight white balance the outside looks yellow rather than blue

I prefer the picture using tungsten white balance because it looks more natural.

Fluorescent Lighting

This kitchen has small under cupboard fluorescent lights.  Using a tripod (as the length of time needed to expose the picture was 10 seconds), these pictures demonstrate that fluorescent lighting is unsuitable. The fluorescent white balance gives a yellow/green colour.



Fluorescent White Balance   Auto White Balance

F22 10 secs ISO100 Focal Length 50mm 3/2/13 12:19

CFL Lighting (Compact Fluorescent Lighting)

I recreated the picture above under CFL lighting. This too gives an unsatisfactory result as the picture has a yellow/pink hue.



Fluorescent White Balance   Auto White balance

F22 20 secs ISO100 Focal Length 47mm 3/2/13 13:14

Differences in the two sets of fluorescent pictures will be because there was more natural light present in the kitchen and the light source was closer to the tins in the kitchen. In order to recreate similar conditions I set up a white background and base for the photo and removed the lamp shade which being opaque glass diffuses the light and lengthens the exposure time.