The barbarians ban the lightbulb

[Judith]

Depending on how much manual control your digital camera allows, you could test for yourself whether certain lighting setups are "natural white" or contaminated with a color tint. Just use the same manual camera settings and no flash to shoot the same object under different lighting conditions. Shooting outdoors at noon under a slightly overcast sky (which is ideal for such tests because the light is diffused) will generally give you white lighting. Shooting indoors under cheap fluorescent tubes will give you a slightly greenish-yellow tinted image. Shooting under higher quality 5000K tubes will give you neutral results much like your outdoor shot. Incandescent bulbs will give you a very amber tone.

Hmmm. Wouldn't different ISO settings be required in those situations? Would that affect the outcome?

Judith

[Jonathan]

Hmmm. Wouldn't different ISO settings be required in those situations? Would that affect the outcome?

No, different film speeds would not necessarily be required, nor would different manual aperture or shutter settings (adjusting the aperture and shutter to accommodate different lighting conditions is preferable to adjusting the ISO because changing the ISO to a higher speed results in poorer "grain" quality). In the do-it-yourself tests that I was suggesting, I was assuming that the amount of light entering the camera would be the same in each of the different lighting scenarios, which would be accomplished by moving the object being photographed closer to the light sources which are weaker.

But, having said that, if one preferred to adjust the ISO or aperture and shutter settings according to the amount of light available rather than move the object being photographed closer to the lights, it wouldn't affect the outcome. Using longer shutter speeds and wider apertures in dimmer lighting conditions (to achieve an optimal exposure) doesn't alter the hue that the film or digital sensor records. If you were to shoot an image of a lit flashlight at f22 for 1/4 of a second, and then shoot it again at f2.8 for 1/250, there would be no difference in hue.

J