Are their any good color filters for DSLR lenses?

[harmonica44]

I was thinking of getting some filters that would be give me certain color looks. Like a blue steel night look and a golden yellow sunlight look. I've been looking online, but in my experience from filters I have bought before, you have to be careful of how they are made cause of unwanted lens flares.

Are their any for DLSRs that are actually really good and pro, and for a good price?

Thanks.

 

[jax_rox]

I don't know why you're pushing your curves so much. There's nothing there that can't be easily done in a minute with the colour wheels.

Also, as knightly has covered, there's basically no blue in sodium vapour lights, so you're going to struggle to get that colour without some noise.

This is a phenomenon present with many tungsten lights, as well as sodium vapour. Tungsten still has more blue than the sodium lights, however. This is also why putting a blue (CTB) gel on a tungsten light cuts 70% of the output - the gel is actually cutting the orange spectrum of the light, and it has to cut so much to get to the right 'blue' balance, that you lose 70% of your light output along the way.

Your first shot, the original, is pretty noisy to begin with, so that's not going to help. What ISO were you shooting at?

 

[knightly]

I built some color breakdowns to illustrate this concept since it seems our previous explanations haven't grabbed hold on this one. These are just screenshots of the youtube video played 720p, full screen. I then used Shake to break out the color channels and display them in a 2x2 grid for comparison. Note that the blue channel exhibits a lot of noise through out... and as you get closer to correct white balance, all 3 color channels have similar dark to light values (they look much more similar in their grayscale representations). Because you're starting with a noisy blue channel, increasing it to match the values in the red and green makes the noise more evident in the resulting image than in the original.

 

[harmonica44]

I was shooting at 800 or 1600 ISO. I was thinking of de-noising the whole thing after color graded. I know it sucks to shoot under those lights, it's just in my city all the streets are filled with them. Only a few distinct locations have white lights, like a park or industrial area. I want to shoot on a normal downtown street, and they are all orange.

I can try with my own lights and generators but the orange will still be in the background or off to the side, and in order to get the cold look I want, I kind of don't want it at all really.

If de-noising is a bad idea (haven't figured out how to apply Denoiser II yet), than I thought a blue filter like a LEE filter that is made to balance orange lights, might work better, but like you said, you loose light that way.

 

[knightly]

This was a fun challenge to take on, so I did -- and I may be procrastinating a difficult edit a little bit:

I was able to steal the info from the green channel and use in in place of the nasty blue channel, then used a standard 3-way color corrector to get back to flesh tone on the cheek. It looks like old technicolor (because it is -- Red & Cyan [blue+green] -- just two colors)... but gets rid of the noise.

 

[knightly]

The specific problem with those lights is that there's no blue in them at all... nothing for the camera to capture, look at the first color breakdown, completely underexposed in the blue channel. The trick then would be to only denoise the blue channel, or replace it with the green and call it artistic choice. You won't get natural colors from anything shot there. Period. The color information doesn't exist at the photonic/physics level in that lighting environment. The camera is fundamentally irrelevant to this discussion... the light doesn't have blue to filter. If you add blue, you're really cutting the orange, which in this case is the only part of the spectrum that exists in this environment. It will only darken the scene, not color correct it.

Post trickery is the only solution in this case... and moving to a 2 color strip effect is probably your safest bet at that point. Avoid yellows in your costuming and makeup... they'll look like crap.

 

[WalterB]

Great explanation, Knightly!

In short: what doesn't get into the camera, can't come out :-p

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. I understand more what you mean now. I started color grading and was surprised at the results though. I almost got the skin color somewhat back, accept for the fact that their is too much noise. I thought about denoising it.

I saw some of COPS, where one of the spin offs of COPS, and I noticed that when the cops are being followed around by the crew, they have a really bright light following them around that can light up a mastershot of four people or more at night on the street.

The light also does not look that obvious and might be able to dominate, the regular street lights, since it seems to on that show. As long as you don't make it obvious that their is a guy with a light following with the characters and moving it. But that show seems to do it like that in parts. What ever light they are using, also does not have be powered by a loud generator since they are able to record live dialogue for the show.

Is this do-able on a microbudget? As long as a crew member is carrying a light, their may not be any legal trouble as well, since there are no stands, and everything is being carried.

Another question I have is, is the reason why DPs nowadays are using daylight balanced lights, compared to tungsten? Is it because their is less noise, cause the blue channel is not as heavy? Not just for night but in general shoots, they are using daylight balanced lights.

 

[jax_rox]

Another question I have is, is the reason why DPs nowadays are using daylight balanced lights, compared to tungsten? Is it because their is less noise, cause the blue channel is not as heavy? Not just for night but in general shoots, they are using daylight balanced lights.

Because they output a hell of a lot more light for much less power draw. For example, a fully spotted 4K HMI par can put out 8,000 footcandles at 35' away. A 10K Tungsten Fresnel fully spotted can put out the same footcandles about 15 or so feet away.

Generally, tungsten is seen as better on skin tones, and in a studio setting where a DP has full control over everything, you tend to see tungsten lights a lot more commonly. On location however, it tends to have to be HMIs as you're often either battling the sun, or lighting large areas for night, in which case you just need the sheer light output, especially if mimicing moonlight as HMIs are already 'blue'.

As always, colour temp of a light is another tool in the DPs arsenal, and more often than not you'll see mixed temp in scenes and shots.

 

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks. I have met three aspiring DPs where I live over the years where I live, and they all used Daylight balanced. However, their lights were not near as bright as my 500 watt and 1000 watt Halogen tungsten lights. So if they want a really bright light, wouldn't Halogens be better, than daylight balanced? Is 10K around as bright as 1000 watt?

 

[jax_rox]

10K is 10,000 watts - 10 times as much light output as your 1k/1000 watt light. It's also uses 10 times as much power. The 10K I mentioned is also tungsten.

My point was to illustrate that a 4K daylight balanced tungsten will put out as much light as the 10k fresnel, but it will use less than half the power.

The DPs you know probably had LED lights, which are cheap.

Also, colour and shape of light is important, not just output. If I needed a slight kick as a soft backlight, and I was shooting in daylight conditions, I'd use maybe a Kino with daylight tubes - it wouldn't put out as much light as your tungsten lights, but that's not what I would want.

Lighting is much more than just having light exist.

 

[harmonica44]

Yep, thanks. I wanted to get 1000 halogens so I can have white light on actors outdoors at night, while the orange street lights will be more in the background. The HMI moonlight sounds like a good idea, I just don't know if it would be convincing since the whole street would have to look like moonlight, but maybe, since others are doing it.

 

[jax_rox]

Yep, thanks. I wanted to get 1000 halogens so I can have white light on actors outdoors at night, while the orange street lights will be more in the background. The HMI moonlight sounds like a good idea, I just don't know if it would be convincing since the whole street would have to look like moonlight, but maybe, since others are doing it.

White light is based on what you set your white balance to, not the light itself. If you used a daylight balanced light with more output, and set your white balance to daylight, then that light would be 'white'. Similarly, setting your white balance to tungsten under tungsten lights will make the tungsten light 'white'.

To light a whole street with HMIs would probably take closing down the street, bringing in your own extras, many HMIs and a full crew to set them up.
All things which require money you don't have.

 

[harmonica44]

For sure. That's why I was thinking of doing it however they do it on Cops, if that's do-able. I know you balance an HMI to be white, but if you do, the orange street lights go insanely red, and they just look worse.