Photographic tungsten lamps and also the newer high-performance flicker-free fluorescent lamps possess the edge over flash that one could work by eye, while they are certainly not as good at stopping movement.

Tungsten lights are incandescent, made by burning a tungsten filament in a controlled rate in a sealed transparent envelope. When specifically designed for photography, the lighting output is high as well as the color temperature is controlled in practically every design. Some lamps are available with a blue coating to the glass, giving a color temperature that approximates that relating to daylight. These are typically intended more to be used in mixed lighting conditions, including combined with daylight, than for straightforward studio use.
The better efficient sort of tungsten lighting is the tungsten-halogen lamp. This uses a similar coiled tungsten filament, but it burns in a a lot higher temperature in halogen gas. As an outcome, these lamps maintain virtually a similar light output and color temperature during their life; additionally last longer than traditional lamps and are smaller regarding their equivalent wattage. Available wattages range from 200 to 10,000, while the most robust are intended for cinematography; the greatest normal wattage for still photographic lights is 2000. The light output is the same as that from a new tungsten lamp of traditional design of the same wattage.

A newer development, particularly relevant to digital photography, in which the camera's white balance settings usually takes proper care color differences, is high-performance fluorescent. The lamps used are flicker-free, as bright as tungsten, color-balanced for 5400K or 3200K, and also cooler and less costly to run.

The orange cast of domestic tungsten lamps, which happens to be far more obvious towards the camera than to the eye, needs white balance adjustment, while not always for the maximum.

Tungsten lamps are the standard, traditional form of lighting for domestic interiors, and this is where you're most likely to get them. Outdoors, and in large interiors used by everyone, they've got mainly been substituted with fluorescent and vapor lighting. A tungsten lamp is incandescent-that is, it shines by burning-and its brightness relies on the amount where the filament is heated. Because this therefore varies according to the wattage, you will get a concept of the brightness, and also the color, in the rating of the lamp. The color range, which can be between orange and yellow, varies according to the color temperature.

Color temperatures are perhaps the initial thing to think about when shooting by available light in houses. Should you enter a shuttered, tungsten-lit room right from daylight, you can immediately notice how orange it seems. Usually, however, we see tungsten light at night, but it would not make eye long to adapt and to see it as almost white. However, photograph a tungsten-lit interior uncorrected-that will be to say, with a "daylight" white balance setting-and you may be astonished at the orange cast, that will not be what you remembered. The colour temperature values to the usual ratings of domestic lamp are lower-that is, redder-than the 3200K rating for traditional "incandescent" white balance correction, therefore will still appear rather warm despite this setting, although normally this really is quite acceptable. As with so many things in photography, the overall response is not just a purely technical one. The ultimate criterion is what looks right, not what measures perfectly.