Questions about colour temperature and which lights to buy are fairly common here, and I've just come across this article from Lowel which I thought might be quite useful.
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Colour Temperature & Colour Rendering Index DeMystified
- Thread starter chilipie
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Great resource... it is linked from an even larger lighting resource on their site: http://www.lowel.com/edu/index.html
This has info on lighting types, placement, and wattages as well
This has info on lighting types, placement, and wattages as well
Great resource... it is linked from an even larger lighting resource on their site: http://www.lowel.com/edu/index.html
This has info on lighting types, placement, and wattages as well
That IS a handy link, thanks as well from me!
All that color temp jazz is why I must mess w/ color correction huh ? . Shooting inside on a partly cloudy day the color temp and lighting conditions shift drastically from one minute ( second ) to the next as the sun goes in and out from behind the clouds.
There are solutions like having plenty of crewe and lights to overcome that, but Im still a low budget no crew fool. therefore I have to get creative in post... we'll see if it works
There are solutions like having plenty of crewe and lights to overcome that, but Im still a low budget no crew fool. therefore I have to get creative in post... we'll see if it works
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Well kinda.
Artificial lights of various types give off light skewed towards one end of the spectrum or the other (or with holes in their spectrum).
Tungsten looks blue, household Incandescent look orange, flourescent can look greenish, etc...
it's all about blending those, or overpowering them with balanced light to give the light the "right" color to look natural (or not).
What I was referring to was using 3200k lights and part of the shot has noonish daylight 5600k spilling in.. 2 differing color temps...OR You are lighting w/ 3200k and then in the middle of the scene the sun comes out bright from the clouds in all or part of the shot OR the once bright sun disappears. You will have some color issues is what I see.
The light will fluctuate.. and yes if you have a crew ( I do not ) and enough lights to overpower the sun... and of course one can set up all the lights they need in about what 30 seconds is all ???............. jus kidding.
A 1 man film crew simply does not have the time was my point.
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The light will fluctuate.. and yes if you have a crew ( I do not ) and enough lights to overpower the sun... and of course one can set up all the lights they need in about what 30 seconds is all ???............. jus kidding.
A 1 man film crew simply does not have the time was my point.
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On a "Pro" set, unless the window was in the shot it very well might have duvetyne over it blocking it out and a 2K light sitting in front of it simulating the light coming in the window (for that very reason).
Now, the level of light kit I use doesn't generally allow for that kind of nonsense either, BUT on a movie with a real budget, it wouldn't be that unusual. In the long run (for them) probably cheaper than stopping production for the sun to move again, or the post work trying to fix it in color correction.
Yeah, I dream of being able to do that. controlled lighting.. at least Im wanting to slow it down as I get better. I am going to rob a liquor store and use the money to rent a grip truck filled w/ lights and crew that will actually show up. OR mebbe I'll learn to do it 1 man production company. I figure I have miles to go on getting my vision captured and presented well. THEN, I will slow it down and make it real pretty. I love dreamy surreal looks, so I shall cheat and alter the stuff in post to mask my oopsies and call it artistic expression till then.
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hmmm color temperature is an awesome, albeit confusing, thing to me. There are so many different solutions to lighting problems....do you white balance to something orange to give you a green hue (if you're in a tungsten environment....(I think?) ) or would you just gel the lights? gelling the lights would be okay, but they lose their intensity. And finding the right point of custom white balance can be a beast as well, I presume.
However, I try to keep in mind that lights are paint, and you can get a really breathtaking image using mixed lighting. So long as you know what you're doing. ...so far it's been accidental for me.
However, I try to keep in mind that lights are paint, and you can get a really breathtaking image using mixed lighting. So long as you know what you're doing. ...so far it's been accidental for me.
Keep this in mind:
If you shoot digital (as pretty much everyone here does), then the sensor on the camera wants to see daylight, at or near 5600K.
This type of light looks bluish compared to standard indoor bulbs.
If it doesn't see this, you get lots of noise in the blue channel by "starving" it of enough blue light. The balance in yellow incandescent and florescent bulbs is off enough to degrade your image.
Do what you can to mitigate: filter 80 series on the lense, or gel the lights more blue, or buy more daylight colored (high CRI though) bulbs.
Mixing temps is going to degrade image in most cases too. As are bulbs that are just one color (including the orange streetlights).
The more 3 channel color info you capture on set, the happier you will be in post.
If you shoot digital (as pretty much everyone here does), then the sensor on the camera wants to see daylight, at or near 5600K.
This type of light looks bluish compared to standard indoor bulbs.
If it doesn't see this, you get lots of noise in the blue channel by "starving" it of enough blue light. The balance in yellow incandescent and florescent bulbs is off enough to degrade your image.
Do what you can to mitigate: filter 80 series on the lense, or gel the lights more blue, or buy more daylight colored (high CRI though) bulbs.
Mixing temps is going to degrade image in most cases too. As are bulbs that are just one color (including the orange streetlights).
The more 3 channel color info you capture on set, the happier you will be in post.
I prefer not trying funky white balancing on set, and just stick with the presets - if all the information is there i can have much finer control over it in post. If you white balanced to something orange, you would end up witha blue picture. This colour temperature diagram may help:
As you can see, if we simplify the graph for the purposes of this explanation, the red to blue gradient is along the x-axis and the green to magenta is along the y-axis. So, if you want to give everything a green hue, you would white balance to a magenta tinted card.
Very good point… it's just a shame there aren't any hard daylight sources available for cheap. The banks of soft fluorescents do give off a nice quality of light, but I couldn't afford to buy an HMI or even rent one on a lot of my projects. Still, at least even cheap tungsten lamps have a CRI of 100!
Here's what we at YAFI have come to after years of working on figuring out how to do this stuff ourselves:
- Hollywood picks a film stock that works with a specific color temperature, then changes all the lights to meet it... they get great results.
- Videographers reset their white balance every shot or every 20 minutes or something. White then depends on the camera's circuitry, the programmers whim and what's actually in the shot when the white balance is set.
We've gone with the Hollywood version. We use either the sun or tungsten lights (work lights are quartz halogen and give more of a bluish cast, fluorescents give a greenish cast). We use only the indoor/outdoor preset on the camera based on our key light, no white balancing at all. We gel the lights to fit the mood of the piece we're doing and create more dramatic lighting by controlling the lights rather than controlling the camera. We've stopped fighting the white balance altogether! On our last production, I wasn't there to make these statements and we ended up with white balance issues... you can only push the image so far before it breaks when correcting for problems.
The camera is a funnel... pour in the right ingredients and you get a tasty concoction... pour every thing through a flavored funnel, and everything tastes like the funnel.
One thing Im getting from this when shooting digital it might be helpful to use 5600k lights in "average" situations where there is some midday daylight in the equation or if you can totally control all light use 5600k as long as you are not trying for an effect of trying to simulate sunset...etc.. When you give the digital cam daylight or 5600k'ish, you are not requiring the cam to compensate and starve certain colors from the mix..
Obviously sunset conditions would require 3200k or so to keep things balanced. What looks strange is when you have 2 differing color lights and there is obvious separation of the two,it sure looks off.
So the visual arts mostly boil down to "painting w/ light "
Obviously sunset conditions would require 3200k or so to keep things balanced. What looks strange is when you have 2 differing color lights and there is obvious separation of the two,it sure looks off.
So the visual arts mostly boil down to "painting w/ light "
I generally concern myself with the temp of the key, then gel the other sources (if I want - artistically) to match or contrast that color.
An indoor shoot can have a large window providing back light, then a tungsten indoors will warm up the face... If it's too warm, throw a 1/4 or 1/2 CTB (Color Temperature Blue) over the fixture to bring it closer (but not all the way) toward the blue. I like to over light the foreground a little so the background becomes slightly dimmer in relation to the foreground, then expose for the key side of the subject... if the difference is too great, either:
1) move the fixture farther from the subject (inverse square dimming)
2) put it on a dimmer (I use router speed controllers from harbor freight tools)
3) use a smaller fixture (lower wattage)
4) or light the background more.
Managing that contrast between the key and the other elements becomes the main concern once you get a handle on light placement (whatever method of lighting you choose for the scene).
Other searches that provide lots of cool results are "portrait lighting" "3 point lighting" "rembrandt lighting" "short lighting" (this is what I use mostly) "broad lighting" "cross lighting" (good for lighting 2 shots - used alot in CSI type shows)
An indoor shoot can have a large window providing back light, then a tungsten indoors will warm up the face... If it's too warm, throw a 1/4 or 1/2 CTB (Color Temperature Blue) over the fixture to bring it closer (but not all the way) toward the blue. I like to over light the foreground a little so the background becomes slightly dimmer in relation to the foreground, then expose for the key side of the subject... if the difference is too great, either:
1) move the fixture farther from the subject (inverse square dimming)
2) put it on a dimmer (I use router speed controllers from harbor freight tools)
3) use a smaller fixture (lower wattage)
4) or light the background more.
Managing that contrast between the key and the other elements becomes the main concern once you get a handle on light placement (whatever method of lighting you choose for the scene).
Other searches that provide lots of cool results are "portrait lighting" "3 point lighting" "rembrandt lighting" "short lighting" (this is what I use mostly) "broad lighting" "cross lighting" (good for lighting 2 shots - used alot in CSI type shows)