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What's the best skin tone temperature in your opinion?

H

harmonica44

I and a camera operator are wondering whether to order some gels for lights or not. The thing is I want to keep the skin tones consistent or at least consistent enough to look good for the movie. Daylight has a nice skin tone. Tungsten and fluorescent are not bad.

I was thinking I could do this either too ways. Shoot under daylight for the daylight scenes obviously. And shoot with halogen lights for the tungsten scenes, such as a house. And shoot with fluorescents for scenes where I want a fluorescent, such as on office. The actors skin will be different colored in each.

Or I can have the actor's skin be daylight balanced in each scene. Just set it to daylight for the tungsten scenes, and gel the halogen lights to look tungsten in the house scenes, and gel the same halogen to look like flourescents for the office scenes.

So the question is should I shoot under the same best looking skin tone temperature for the whole movie, and gel all the lights to be different colors? Or should I use different colored lights throughout under different color temperatures in camera?
 
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"Or I can have the actor's skin be daylight balanced in each scene. Just set it to daylight for the tungsten scenes, and gel the halogen lights to look tungsten in the house scenes, and gel the same halogen to look like flourescents for the office scenes."

Do you mean this latter in this sentence?

"So the question is should I shoot under the same best looking skin tone temperature for the whole movie, and gel all the lights to be different colors? Or should I use different colored lights throughout under different color temperatures in camera?"

Or the latter in this sentence?
 
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You can do either.

It's up to you as the shooter. Make your choice and live with it. Neither is inherently wrong, it just depends on what you're looking for.

If you white balance and expose properly in the first situation, your actors skin tone and colour should not change all that much.

Keep in mind that if you keep it on daylight consistently, your actors skin tone and colour will change anyway - if you set it to daylight and have tungsten coloured lights playing, then your actors skin colour will be very orange/warm, which is what you seem to be trying to avoid in the first place..
 
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The easiest thing to do would be to white balance your camera for the lights you are using in a particular scene. This will turn the light white and leave the skin tones normal. Once the light is balanced for the scene you can add whatever gels you want to set the color for the scene. You would need to white balance for each type of light you are shooting under as each is a different temp on the Kelvin scale.

For example if you white balance for tungsten a fluorescent light will be green and the tungsten will be white instead of orange.
 
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Okay thanks, I get that. But their are gels when it comes to the colors of the lights. I am wondering which skin tone is the best. It seems that maybe the skin tone of 5500 Kelvin might be the best looking. So I thought maybe I should keep the camera at 5500 K, for the actors faces for every scene, then gel every light of every scene to the color I please, maybe. That's what I was thinking may be a good idea.
 
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harmonica44 said:
It seems that maybe the skin tone of 5500 Kelvin might be the best looking.
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Isn't someone going to explain to him that skin tone isn't measured in Kelvin? Anyone? Please? I'm running on just a few hours of sleep and don't have the energy.

PANTONE-SkinTone-Guide.jpg
 
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I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish - you realise that if you gelled your tungsten-balanced lights with CTB, and raised the colour temp to ~5500k, then you'd be getting the exact same skin tone setting your camera to 5500k as you would if you took the gels off and set the colour temp to 3200k or whatever your lights colour temperatures are set as.

I get the feeling you either didn't test this properly, or you tested it simply changing the colour temp without changing your lighting.

It would be pointless to gel all your tungsten lights to CTB just so you can shoot 5500k 'for the hell of it'. Shoot 3200k.
 
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jax_rox said:
I get the feeling you either didn't test this properly, or you tested it simply changing the colour temp without changing your lighting.
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Or he simply doesn't really understand what's going on.

It's simple - ultimately the goal is to have all of your skin tones consistent from scene to scene, and have them look as natural as possible (at least as a starting point).

White balance your camera to the primary light source on your actor's faces - that's it.

Doesn't matter if those sources change from scene to scene because you're going to change your white balance for each new lighting situation.

You should only gel lights when you are using mixed lighting sources - i.e. daylight coming through a window on one side of your actor, and a tungsten light on the other side. It really doesn't matter which side you correct to the other - that's more a question of practicality and the equipment you have available to you.

The only other consideration I would give to a preference in lighting temperature is that most digital cameras are least sensitive in the blue spectrum. Using tungsten sources, which don't have a strong blue component, can result in more visible noise in the blue channel than using daylight sources - so if you have 5600k lights I would use those. Otherwise, just white balance your camera properly and don't worry about it.
 
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The temperature is for your lights, not your skin. You correct to either your key light, or the light you have the least control over (sunlight). Then you gel the rest of the light to match this single source, or not as your eye desires. I like to rock a color separation between my key/fill and my back light to give the shot more depth and make Grading simpler in post as I can grab on to chroma based keys more easily for fine control of the grade.

You adjust your camera to the lights, then the skin tone will automatically be correct. To style it, add color in terms of a filter/change to YOUR taste after the lighting is set, or in post grading afterwards.
 
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Okay thanks. It's just I was told on here before in a shot, that the actor's skin is too pale, because I have sucked all the red out of the image by setting it to 1500 kelvin. So therefore I thought using specific lights and gelling was better, so I could keep good skin tones.

Let's say I want to do a scene where someone turns on incandescent light bulbs that are around a mirror. But I also want to light the scene with halogen lights, that are doubling for the incandescents which are seen in the shot. Halogens burn at 3000 kelvin. So I would have to gel them so that they appear to be 2800 kelvin on camera, so they then match the 2800 kelvin incandescents that are around the mirror. Is that right?
 
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harmonica44 said:
Okay thanks. It's just I was told on here before in a shot, that the actor's skin is too pale, because I have sucked all the red out of the image by setting it to 1500 kelvin.
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Why on earth would you set your white balance at 1500K? Were you lighting the actor's face with a stoplight?

Let's say I want to do a scene where someone turns on incandescent light bulbs that are around a mirror. But I also want to light the scene with halogen lights, that are doubling for the incandescents which are seen in the shot. Halogens burn at 3000 kelvin. So I would have to gel them so that they appear to be 2800 kelvin on camera, so they then match the 2800 kelvin incandescents that are around the mirror. Is that right?
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A difference of 200 degrees isn't going to have a huge effect, and if both light sources are lighting the subject fairly equally they'll blend to give you something in the range of 2900K. I wouldn't bother gelling anything. Just turn on the lights, hold up a grey card or a piece of white paper in the position of the actor's face, and do a custom white balance, you'll be fine.
 
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Okay thanks.

I have another question but related to color temperature. Instead of having to mix lights, and gel one, do they sell lights where you can adjust the temperature on the light? Instead of changing the color in the camera ONLY, it would be nice to have a light you can change the temperature in as well, so it can then be any light you want, and be gelled to any color you want. Do they make such lights, cause I can't find them if they do.
 
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harmonica44 said:
I have another question but related to color temperature. Instead of having to mix lights, and gel one, do they sell lights where you can adjust the temperature on the light? Instead of changing the color in the camera ONLY, it would be nice to have a light you can change the temperature in as well, so it can then be any light you want, and be gelled to any color you want. Do they make such lights, cause I can't find them if they do.
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Arri LED (L7) series.

But I mean, you're looking at ~$4k/light for those specific fixtures.
 
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Okay thanks. What about shooting outdoors in daylight?

Let's say you want to shoot in the sun, and you set the white balance to white. But then all of a sudden the sun goes behind clouds, and it's cloudy, and the white balance is now a bit blue-ish and you don't want that. Should the camera operator be adjusting the color temperature on the fly if things like that happen outdoors?

What if you are doing a scene where actors walk into shade and then walk out. Should you do a cut, then switch white balances back, after they come out of the shade?
 
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