iyaz akhtar +brent bye I just watched the latest episode on setting up a home studio and had a qu...

[G+_Allen Bryant]

iyaz akhtar +brent bye I just watched the latest episode on setting up a home studio and had a question about the lighting. +brent bye , you mentioned color temperature a couple of times and i was wondering what color temperature or CRI you used for the lamps. Do you try to stay around the 5000k area or does it depend on your location?

[G+_Brent Bye]

The color temperature of the lights in Tom's home studio are mostly daylight balanced at around 5500K. The camera is set accordingly as well so that people and objects on-camera appear in a proper 'white point' of lighting source. During our demo of the fluorescent 'budget' light, the color temp of the camera was a bit off, causing the orange shift in skin tone. As mentioned, it's easily fixed with a white balance or color temperture shift in the camera. You can just as easily use other color temps of lights in your studio (such as 3200K or other) and then use the camera's white balance settings to make subjects appear color correct.

With regard to CRI (color rendering index) you won't have any control as each lamp manufacturer controls the CRI of the lamps they produce.

CRI is a gauge that dictates how well the light source is able to create light that illuminates subjects within an acceptable visible spectrum for the human eye and for cameras. Generally speaking a higher CRI of 80 or 90 gets closer to a perfect score of 100. CRI ratings at and below 80 will cause a slight shift in how the eye perceives the colors reproduced as light reflects off an object and into the eye or a camera. Many RBG-LEDs these days have lower CRI numbers and don't reproduce colors on camera when compared to traditional tungsten and daylight balanced light sources.