why is my flood light studio lighting causing my prints to be off color?

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same as above.

-- joyce zeuschner (dream_chaser124@hotmail.com), October 15, 1999

Answers

Are you telling naughty jokes in the darkroom?

Seriously, without a little more info we're gonna have to guess. How "off color" and in what direction, blue or yellow-orange?

Presumably you are shooting color negative film and making color prints and all the chemistry and paper is up to date and your processing is squared away?

If the same film prints well in your darkroom, (or the commercial lab you use) after having been exposed in sunlight, then you have daylight balanced film and you're going to have to filter your flood light to match it, or use the color correction gels available from the various photo supply companys, on your lens. You either match the light source to the film you're using, or the film to the light source your shooting under.

The third option is to switch to VPL or whatever the Fuji or Agfa equivalant is.

But, if you're using a commercial lab, presuambaly they would've pointed the non-match of your film to your light source out to you and asked if you wanted them to correct for it in printing, which is well within their ability,

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), October 16, 1999.


The comments about tungsten balanced film are what came to my mind first too. You may be experiencing voltage fluctuations on your power lines. It only takes a 5% change to affect the color output of the lights, although that should be well within a lab's ability to correct. If everything has to be right on all the time, you're going to need a constant voltage transformer with an amperage rating sufficient to handle all the lights connected to it. Lamps age too. I'm not sure how much of a color shift this introduces. Sylvania ought to be able to tell you.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), October 18, 1999.

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