Is Fluorescent light inferior to incandescent?

[bcachot]

Is Fluorescent light inferior to incandescent?
 
Been exclusively an outdoor photographer, but now building a studio. I read somewhere that because fluoros peak strongly in more than one part of the spectrum, you get a kind of light that is difficult to balance naturally. Since you can set a white point for any kind of lighting, I’m assuming what that’s trying to say is

a)   while you might balance, let’s say the mid greys to neutral, the highlights or shadows might then be out of whack in a way that’s unnatural.
B)   Because non-incandescent light has a  less continuous spectrum, images will appear more monochromatic.

To complicate matters more there is the issue of digital cameras. Some say that because of custom white balance, you get perfectly fine result under fluoro with digital. When we do a custom white balance on a digicam, is the camera just shifting the white point or is it actually compensating across the spectrum to even out the pits and valley in spectrum. If the latter is the case then presumably a lot of in camera white balance correction could produce  more noise even if output is spectrally correct.

I’ve left halogen out of the discussion but I guess these questions apply equally since it also appears to be popular in some studios.

If anyone can refer me to a site that deals with the advantages of one type of lighting over another for photography, I would appreciate it.

[cescx]

To center the question, the incandescent classic light for photography, is a 3200 Kº, from a quartz bubbles, common halogen, and for advanced, the HMI equlilibrated to 5500 Kº; and the fluorescent ligth for photography, is a special tubes, equilibrated to 5000 or 5500 K.

In theory, the colour temp. is apply only for the blue to red spectrum, and the natural light not content the magenta to green spectrum.

If you use color balanced light, halogen, hmi or fluo, the result is the same, but, with the halogen or hmi, you will obtain more intensity and versatility, due the fluo, alone it can be utilized with light boxes.

For my, in the studio, the best and versatile light is the flash, due, your color temp and intensity is the same, even after several hours working. Is not hot, as the incandescent, and is stable to 5500 Kº and besides, its intensity is  10X with a very lower consumption.