Book light technique: am I doing something wrong?

[omar robles]

Hello members:

So after experimenting with a lot of techniques I have come up with a lighting method that has gotten me results I thought were good.  Basically using a FORZA 500 i attach it to a big umbrella diffusor which I then light through a 6 foot rag of unbleached muslin.  It gets me a nice soft look on the talent.  Unfortunately someone has put doubt into my method.  I took the footage to a colorist and he indicated that the skin tones were strange and he had to do a lot of work to correct them.   As you may or may not know the Forza 500 is a daylight balanced 5600 kelvin light.  Am I wrong to be blasting that light through a warm diffusion such as the unbleached muslin?

 

 

Edited February 14 by omar robles
Forgot to attach clip

[David Mullen ASC]

Nothing wrong with warming up skin tones by lighting through unbleached muslin, but being a daylight source, if the camera was set to 3200K, then the light isn't warm, it's still cool.

You can make that light look warm, cool, or neutral depending on your base color temperature setting.

Your colorist should be more clear as to what the problem was with color-correcting the skin tones in the shot, too green, too magenta, too desaturared, too saturated? Was the camera set-up properly for the color rendition you intended?

[omar robles]

David

The look was what I was looking . Unfortunately my colorist felt the skin tones weren’t right by the lighting. You see anything wrong?

[omar robles]

35 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Nothing wrong with warming up skin tones by lighting through unbleached muslin, but being a daylight source, if the camera was set to 3200K, then the light isn't warm, it's still cool.

You can make that light look warm, cool, or neutral depending on your base color temperature setting.

Your colorist should be more clear as to what the problem was with color-correcting the skin tones in the shot, too green, too magenta, too desaturared, too saturated? Was the camera set-up properly for the color rendition you intended?

By base color temperature setting do you meaning setting in camera?

[David Mullen ASC]

If you liked the skin tones then why did you let the colorist change them? Doesn't he work for you?

If you weren't shooting raw, then you were baking in any color temperature settings. Were you recording raw? If so, then usually the color temperature setting on the camera is only metadata.

[omar robles]

Wasn’t shooting wrong. As for the colorist I am just concerned I am not seeing something wrong that he is catching.

[Franklin De Los Santos]

These look good, nothing odd about them if that’s the look you are going for(warm). The shot where the subject is wearing a pink jacket has two varieties, cool/warm. The cool looks a little more balanced. Is the colorist experienced? What exactly do you want the colorist to do if you are baking in the look?

[omar robles]

Was going for the Deakins type warm look he has in his work.