Recreating Dusk Light in Studio

[Ruth Vilas]

Hi everyone,

I’m recreating a dusk light in a studio (living room with two walls) and would appreciate advice. I’ve attached a reference image for context. Here's my plan:

• Camera WB: 4000K
• From Outside: 9K HMI + Full CTB bounced into 12x12 ultrabounce, and direct SkyPanel S60 at 8000K + 216 diffusion for the interior background.
• From Inside: Litemats for room tone and key wrap.

My main question: What’s the typical color temperature of the sky at dusk, and how much CTB should I use to match it? Is full CTB ok? Also, what’s would be the right temperature for the LED lights to balance naturally?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The color varies depending on weather but on a clear night it can get quite blue, up to 12,000K.  Double Blue is a good start (i.e. Full CTB on an HMI). Technically I guess it would be something more like 3/4 CTB  (you need something that shifts the MIRED value by -100, Full CTB shifts it by -130 and Half CTB shifts it by -70) so it depends on how much blue you want. You may find that Half CTB on an HMI is blue enough -- and if you are matching a Skypanel at 8000K, then it would be Half CTB at the most on the HMI.

5500K has a MIRED value of 181 and 8000K has a MIRED value of 125 (divide 1,000,000 by the color temp to get the value) so you'd need a gel that has a MIRED shift of -56.  As I said, Half CTB has a MIRED shift of -70 on average so is the closest gel.

[Albion Hockney]

Blue always confuses me. I've had skypanels at 10k blue and balanced the camera for daylight and it didnt even feel that blue.

You can always just push the camera white balance warmer and put your tungsten sources at like 2K kelvin too.

your lamp plan seems good.

if you have windows with a translite or something keep that in mind too....that might be the hardest part to sell.

Edited January 9 by Albion Hockney

[Ruth Vilas]

On 1/9/2025 at 4:02 PM, Albion Hockney said:

Blue always confuses me. I've had skypanels at 10k blue and balanced the camera for daylight and it didnt even feel that blue.

It happended the same with me when I was trying to recreate a moonlight using skypanels. I tried the highest kelvin but it didnt look that blue in camera with 4000K so I had to change it to HSI mode and put it blue.  But if I use asteras on 10.000 it looks blue so I dont have to use de HSI mode.