Question by baldmosher: 35mm film SLR camera, what settings for fluorescent light?
It’s a Minolta 5000 SLR camera, standard 35-70mm lens, ISO200 35mm film. I’m trying to work out what settings to use for a fairly bright fluorescent kitchen light.
I assume that fluorescent light flickers at 50Hz, which I assume also means that the light is 25 times on and 25 off per second. So if I set the shutter to 1/25″ I’d have a 100% chance of having the light on only once whilst the shutter is open. Ideal. But the shutter settings on this camera only do 1/15″ or 1/30″.
Simple maths tells me that 1/15 would have a chance of being on once, or twice. 1/30 would have a chance of being on once, or not at all.
Am I talking rubbish here?
And if I’m not talking rubbish, what shutter & aperture setting should I be using?
Best answer:
Answer by fhotoace
There are no settings for white balance on a 35 mm camera … or any other camera that uses film.
What you need is a lens filter. FLD when you are using daylight film under fluorescent lighting or an FLB if you are shooting with tungsten film under fluorescent lamps
The only time you have to be concerned about the frequency of lamps is when you are shooting video and there are computer or television screens in the shot. But that is not what you are talking about. Electromagnetic ballasts may cause problems for video recording as there can be a ‘beat effect’ between the periodic reading of a camera’s sensor and the fluctuations in intensity of the fluorescent lamp. Still photos rarely show this.
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