Datacolor User to User Support Group.

Gene,

Thank you very much for this information. This is the kind of thing I
was looking for. I will be making a stop at various hardware stores in
my area to look for such lamps and bulbs.

Cheers,
Pierre

--- In colorvision_group@yahoogroups.com, Eugene Coggins
<elcoggins@...> wrote:
>
> >Hi Gene,
> >
> >The room I work in has very little lighting and none of it is
> >fluorescent. Is there such a thing as daylight incandescent bulbs?
> 
> Yes Pierre. But I found the incandescent bulbs 
> are usually poor.  I recommend low energy 
> fluorescent "BULBS" that replace the incandescent 
> bulbs. Currently at home improvement stores one 
> can by these replacement "bulbs" that look like a 
> miniature spiral fluorescent tube. They typically 
> consume 27 watts and produce the equivalent light 
> of a 100 watt incandescent bulb. However, 
> carefully inspect the packaging to determine the 
> color temperature. I use a lot of long 
> fluorescent tubes in ceiling lights and on my 
> desk where my computer resides. However, in a few 
> table lamps, I use the replacement fluorescent 
> bulbs mentioned above.
> 
> Another very important unit of measure is the 
> color rendering number. It is on a scale of 0 to 
> 100. You can have a light that has a average 
> distribution of color temperatures that is not 
> uniform. In other words, there can be spikes in 
> the color spectrum that will still yield the 
> average desired color temperature. So the closer 
> the color rendering is to 100, no spikes, the 
> better. Typically somewhere between 90 and 95 is 
> quite acceptable.
> 
> Phillips makes a fluorescent tube that is called 
> "Natural Sunshine." it is 5000°K and has a color 
> rendering of 92. They also make a tube that is 
> called "Daylight Deluxe" It has a color 
> temperature of 6500°K but also has a poor color 
> rendering of 84. The down side of all this is 
> that these Natural Sunshine tubes cost twice as 
> much as the regular Cool White.
> 
> I just purchased from Home Depot a bunch of 
> fluorescent bulbs for $7 each made by N:Vision, 
> manufactured in GA. They produce 100 watts 
> equivalent light yet consume only 27 watts. They 
> are labeled "Daylight." They are also labeled as 
> having a color temperature of 5500°K.
> 
> The whole purpose of calibrating your monitor is 
> that you hope that what you see on your monitor 
> is what comes out of your printer. While it can 
> never be exact, is can be very close. If you see 
> a color image on your screen and then look at the 
> print under a poor light, it will not match. So 
> matching the color temperature of the ambient 
> lighting you are working in to that of the 
> monitor is very important. Also be aware that the 
> print should dry for at least 12 hours or more 
> before color matching.
> 
> One word about the Spyder2 Pro. I found when 
> calibrating my monitor with this device, to be 
> very conservative on the manual brightness 
> setting. If the monitor brightness is set too 
> high, the colors on the monitor will appear very 
> bright but not in the print.
> 
> Hope all this helps,
> 
> Gene
>