Can you get a tunsgten balanced flash for still photography?

H

harmonica44

I have been offered jobs for still photography, and one thing a lot of people seem to agree on is that skin tones under tungsten light look better than skin tones under daylight or the light of a flash. The skin looks more of a shrimpy pink under that white balance of light, where as tungsten produces that movie looking golden skin tone that is more appealing.

But I cannot find any tungsten balanced flashes, and wonder if their is any. You think their would be since film is gone, and you can just switch white balances at at the click of a button, so why not have more flash color options that give you more appealing looks in your skin tones?
 
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Why not just buy a $10 gel and cut it to the size of the flash? Or buy a $5 coloured diffuser?

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Oh okay thanks. I wasn't sure if the gel would be worth it, since you have to keep re-gelling it, and not sure if the gel was re-usable. So the color diffuser is the same color as tungsten then? Cool!

Thanks.
 
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Flash lights almost never get gels on them unless it has to match other light sources or if mixed lights are the purpose.
All the adds you'll find on billboards or in magazines: if they flashed, it's almost always daylight(-ish) flash.

You are offered jobs, but you have no idea how to flash or use gels?
Did you ever shoot stills with flashlight?
And if you did, which flashlight did you use?
 
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harmonica44 said:
one thing a lot of people seem to agree on is that skin tones under tungsten light look better than skin tones under daylight or the light of a flash. (...)
But I cannot find any tungsten balanced flashes
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So, you've got someone telling you tungsten is better for skin tones. But not a single flash unit you can find - the very same flash units used by millions of professional photographers around the world for decades - is tungsten balanced. What can you deduce from this?
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
... not a single flash unit you can find ...is tungsten balanced. What can you deduce from this?
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harmonica44 said:
I couldn't find any to buy and the stores I checked only sold daylight. Thanks though. I will look some more.
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You keep doin' that, Slugger. Perhaps it will keep you occupied long enough to distract you from forum threads like this.

I have never experienced skin tone problems under daylight or flash, shooting both film and digital stills for a long time.

It's probably a safe assumption that you're using the same DSLR you use to shoot all these inane indie film projects you keep getting involved in (with no results). Here's the secret that nobody has told you about DSLRs: when it comes to getting the image, stills and video are the SAME DAMNED THING*. White balance, white balance, white balance. That's it.

*That said, professional photography requires a RAW workflow, and stills generally require MORE light. There's less room for high ISO in stills if you want to avoid noise and preserve detail, especially for portraiture. Live event coverage is a little different. But it's all about white balance. Keep looking for that tungsten-balanced flash. Really, I wish you the best of luck on that. I'll ask you the same question that ItDonnedOnMe asked: daylight-balanced flashes have been good enough for professional photographers for a long, long time, and you haven't been able to find a daylight-balanced flash, so what does that tell you?
 
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AcousticAl said:
You keep doin' that, Slugger. Perhaps it will keep you occupied long enough to distract you from forum threads like this.

I have never experienced skin tone problems under daylight or flash, shooting both film and digital stills for a long time.

It's probably a safe assumption that you're using the same DSLR you use to shoot all these inane indie film projects you keep getting involved in (with no results). Here's the secret that nobody has told you about DSLRs: when it comes to getting the image, stills and video are the SAME DAMNED THING*. White balance, white balance, white balance. That's it.

*That said, professional photography requires a RAW workflow, and stills generally require MORE light. There's less room for high ISO in stills if you want to avoid noise and preserve detail, especially for portraiture. Live event coverage is a little different. But it's all about white balance. Keep looking for that tungsten-balanced flash. Really, I wish you the best of luck on that. I'll ask you the same question that ItDonnedOnMe asked: daylight-balanced flashes have been good enough for professional photographers for a long, long time, and you haven't been able to find a daylight-balanced flash, so what does that tell you?
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^ This.

If you really want to add a warm glow to everything, perhaps try a decent lens filter, or some post-work. Changing color temperature both in camera and after shooting are some of the easiest things to do. Hell, if you want the easiest possible way to better pictures where skin tone could use to be warmer, just apply RGB curves, drop the blue by a few points in the center, raise the red by a few points in the center. If you exposed well, this should preserve the color in the highlights and shadows pretty well, but bring a warmth to the skin tones.

If, however, you demand to change the color of the flash:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/292678-REG/LEE_Filters_DTP_Daylight_to_Tungsten_Filter.html

This and some tape should get you wherever you want to go.
 
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Okay thanks. Changing color temperature in camera, is different from changing skin tone though. The best way to get a tungsten like skin tone is too put the color temperature at 8000 k or above with the flash, but that still doesn't look the same as tungsten. I could change the color in post, but I am not that good with curves, and can never get the image to look as good as it would in camera. Doing it in post also creates more noise in comparison in my tests.

Plus if I get hired for photography jobs, a lot of people will want it in camera, since I am not yet that good with color grading. But I think I will get a gel, filter, or a tungsten flash, now that it was mentioned there is one. I will just have to look at more specific stores I guess.
 
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harmonica44 said:
Plus if I get hired for photography jobs, a lot of people will want it in camera, since I am not yet that good with color grading. But I think I will get a gel, filter, or a tungsten flash, now that it was mentioned there is one. I will just have to look at more specific stores I guess.
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My question was an attempt to get you to think critically about the situation and hopefully come to the correct conclusion on your own - unfortunately that's clearly not working.

So the answer is no - nobody uses tungsten balanced flash units, and you're not going to find them no matter how 'specific' the stores you look in. Professional photographers all use the standard daylight-balanced strobes you can find everywhere and get excellent results from them. In general the only reason a photographer would even gel a flash to tungsten is to match it with other existing light sources; it has nothing to do with getting better skin tones.

If you are unable to get good skin tones using a standard flash you are doing something wrong - it's not a shortcoming of the hardware.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
In general the only reason a photographer would even gel a flash to tungsten is to match it with other existing light sources; it has nothing to do with getting better skin tones.
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This is important, Ryan. And yes, gels are re-usable. If you're shooting in, say, a hotel conference room with really crappy tungsten lights that cast an orange nastiness even seen by the naked eye, you may need to slap a gel on your flash in order to keep more consistent color. A selection of CTO and CTS (straw, slightly more orange than CTO) will come in handy, along with some gaff tape.

But how many times do we have to tell you that you WILL NOT find a flash that is balanced to anything other than daylight?

ItDonnedOnMe said:
If you are unable to get good skin tones using a standard flash you are doing something wrong - it's not a shortcoming of the hardware.
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This. A million times, this.

Quit searching for a solution that doesn't exist to a problem that shouldn't be a problem. Learn how to use your camera, learn how to use curves, and learn how to work with RAW. If you do your job properly on the front-end, you shouldn't have added noise in post.
 
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The misinformation and wrong assumptions in this thread is staggering.

Gels are used to help match or contrast with other light sources, not to change the color of the skin (assuming you want accurate skin reproduction). White balance is for changing skin tones, not gels.

My advice to most people: use ambient light. Don't try using a flash. If you don't know how color works, you certainly won't know how to use a flash to good effect. You can have the best stove, but it won't make you a good chef. Similarly you can get all the photo equipment in the world, and a real photographer will kick your ass using a disposable camera and LED flashlight.

One last note: film is far more susceptible to high ISO artifacts than stills. There are some very good noise removal programs for a still which does a decent job of preserving detail. While a video doesn't usually have as much detail due to resolution, noise is much more obvious due to the moving nature of video. I will shoot at isos of up to even 3200 for stills, but worry if I have to exceed ISO 320 for video.
 
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Well I want my light to be white when shooting pics. Not all the time, but if I want it to be white that is, which is a lot. But the skin tones produced under tungsten light at a tunsgten white balance, just look better, than daylight skin tones, under a daylight balance. A lot of people seem to agree there, when I ask their opinions, and a lot of movies are shot under tungsten lights, on a tungsten white balance. So I assume that's just what most photographers, cinematographers, and viewers like, which is why it's done often.
 
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harmonica44 said:
Well I want my light to be white when shooting pics. Not all the time, but if I want it to be white that is, which is a lot. But the skin tones produced under tungsten light at a tunsgten white balance, just look better, than daylight skin tones, under a daylight balance. A lot of people seem to agree there, when I ask their opinions, and a lot of movies are shot under tungsten lights, on a tungsten white balance. So I assume that's just what most photographers, cinematographers, and viewers like, which is why it's done often.
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No. All light is colored. Or all of it is white, if it's white balanced correctly. Doesn't matter is 100% of the people agree with you, you don't vote on what's true except when it's a tyranny by the people.

I'd be delighted to tell you the needed info, but you've been led to water so many times I'm the past, but refuse to drink.

Maybe it's just magic.
 
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harmonica44 said:
Well I want my light to be white when shooting pics.
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There's a reason they call it "white" balance.

harmonica44 said:
and a lot of movies are shot under tungsten lights, on a tungsten white balance. So I assume that's just what most photographers, cinematographers, and viewers like, which is why it's done often.
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For Pete's sake...

First, please examine your success rate of making assumptions.

Second, lots of films also use HMI (daylight). On a related note, I've lost count of the number of TV shows I've worked where we based our lighting on HMI, and if tungsten lights were used they were CTB gelled.

Third, daylight-balanced studio flashes have been good enough for professional portraiture (read: skin tones) for a long, long time. Why has that not changed if tungsten is so much more desirable?
 
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