Downside of shooting with natural light fluorescent bulbs?

[artifactor]

We're having some custom equipment fabricated for our studio and I was wondering what people thought of shooting to "natural light" or "full spectrum" standard fluorescent lighting?

Honestly I haven't done a thorough test or even thought it through completely, but using multiples of some lower-than-acceptable wattage bulbs, the results were encouraging.

There are some clear benefits for us to use these as a supplement to more traditional lighting, anyone have any thoughts before I open up my wallet?

[Asylum Steve]

...I say go for it. The White Balance feature of most DSLRs means you can (fairly) easily balance for a mixture or blend of light temperatures.

Film, on the other hand, will be much trickier to work with, even with "day or natural light" fluorescent lamps, because what the human eye sees and the actual color temp may be very different...

[wwinn]

The question to consider when using Fluorescent lighting is what is
the ballast of the light? A magnetic ballast is not desirable for
photography because the flicker is at 60 HZ and if shooting with a
shutter speed of 1/60th of a second or faster you will not get a
correct exposure.

Electronic ballasts, like the ones in ALZO 300 lights, flicker at about
15,000 HZ and are suitable for digital photography with shutter
speeds less than 1/1000 of a second.

(For ALZO 300 lights see web page http://sell-it-on-the-
net.com/online_store/selection_continuous_cool_alzo300.htm

[another view]

Newer architectural/commercial fluorescents with electronic ballasts are usually 20khz, so you're even better with "standard strip" fixtures and high end lamps. The color temperature is one thing, but also pay attention to the color rendering index (CRI). CRI ratings go from 0 to 100 but have nothing to do with color temperature - incandescent lighting gets a 100, but is very warm in color. High end fluorescent daylight tubes can get well into the 90's which should be fine - and already a daylight temperature. Older CW (cool white) are more like 4100k and 65 CRI - these are the ones that make everything look green.

"Full Spectrum" is really just a marketing term. Technically, incandescent is full spectrum - but the term is usually applied to daylight temperature lamps. The cheapest way to get really accurate daylight temp light with an electronic ballast (that won't flicker) would mean a trip to an electrical supply store. A tube like a Philips F32T8/TL950 or equivalent GE or Sylvania would do what I mention above. This is a 4' tube and should cost you about $10-12 each. A "standard strip" with an electronic ballast for these tubes (usually for two tubes) should be $25-35. BTW, this is the stuff I work with all day... ;)