Lighting

Guidelines

CRI

We should never buy bulbs that have a CRI rating of less than 85. Really 90+ or 95+ should be preferred. Colors will look washed out with lower CRIs. If CRI is not specified then it is safe to assume it is lower than 85.

High quality lighting makes a big difference in how nice it feels to be in an area and since LED bulbs last for a long time it makes sense to invest in good lighting.

When replacing fluorescent bulbs with LED equivalents unfortunately it can be very difficult to get a product that doesn't have a worse CRI since decent fluorescents are often 90+ and many LED replacements are 80 or less. Trust me, it makes a big difference, e.g. food will look less appetizing under low CRI light and things will look less punchy when filming.

If you want to buy very high CRI lighting then https://store.yujiintl.com/ is a good bet but they are expensive. If you just want something ok then Ikea is fine (generally CRI 85 or 87) but they have a limited selection of bulb types.

Color temperature

Generally around 4000k should be good for most Omni stuff. Much above that and the lighting feels to harsh. You can go to 3500 or even 3200 for more cozy warm lighting but below that it becomes more reddish and not conducive to getting things done

Flickering

Some LEDs flicker which you generally can't see when looking straight at them but it can make filming impossible or reportedly give some folks headaches. Look for features like "non-flickering" in the description or only buy from reputable brands.

Directness

Whenever possibly try to make lighting that is indirect, e.g. bouncing off a white wall or lampshade. When this is not possible try to ensure that there is some filter in between the bulb itself and our eyes, e.g. when buying fluorescent bulb LED replacements some of them are in clear plastic tubes which means you end up looking at very small and harsh pinpoints of light from the individual LEDS. This is bad. Try instead to buy some that have a semi-opaque white coating so the light is spread out more evenly.

Basement

The basement lighting is F96T12 (8 feet T12) single pin fluorescent bulbs with ballasts though some ballasts are broken as of this writing (Aug 2021) and we are considering replacing those with LED equivalents.

Currently I (juul) am talking to the seller of these bulbs to see if they have a 4000k version (they did not :/)