Originally Posted by
LabRat
The good news about using CFL's is that they generate much less heat than tungsten lights, so in a reflector, the gels can even be taped to the top of the reflector and hang with a little airspace at the bottom... Or a frame can be made with mattboard, plywood, etc to hold the gels... The gels can take low/medium heat, but not with hot tungsten lights, which require at least 1' of airspace between reflector & gel...
The bad news about using CFL's & crosspolarization is that the CFL's have a much lower output than tungsten and the polarizing eats light like crazy, so your exposures will be very long... And the color balance tends to get weird with these, and have a "dead" looking effect without the highlights... If you need to get rid of most all of highlights (like shooting a plastic bag full of food or stuff, or heavily textured/reflective items, good, but for general work, kinda strange looking)... And metering the shot is very difficult without shooting a lot of Polaroids (in the old days)...
I've been using CFL's for shooting macro a lot lately, and more than a foot away from the subject, the light falls off a lot, and you loose that small f-stop you started with... But excellent, cool, crisp light near the subject!!!
Steve K
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