This project looks at indoor lighting and outdoor lighting at night. Tungsten, flourescent and vapour lamps. Tungsten, the most likely found at home, photographs reddish, the setting on the camera is designed to deal with these lightbulbs.
Most indoor lighting in public places is flourescent, the results of which can appear greenish. Flourescent lighting seems white to the eye but the camera picks up the fact that the lamps put out an uneven mixture of colours. But the colour cast can instead be yellowish, and in any case lacking in 'colourfulness'. The problem for photography is that floursecent lighting does not emit a full spectrum of colours. Digital cameras have a white balance setting designed to compensate, but its not always as successful as for tungsten lighting, because the composition of flourescent lamps varies.
Most flouresent lamps are in the form of long tubes, although more recent kinds are shaped like rings or look like the rounder tungsten lamps. They are known as CFL (compact florescent lights) and are beginning to replace tungsten lamps in the home for cost and environmental reasons. They can be seen to flicker rapidly.
Vapour discharge lamps are the third kind of artificial light but are not as widely used as tungsten or flourescent, except for street lighting, floodlight of public buildings and sports stadiums. Sodium lamps are easy to spot, they look yellow and photograph yellow or yellow-green. These cannot be corrected.
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