mixed lighting situation

[Roberflowers]

I'm working on a student shoot and we just a location that is a gym that has a couple of windows...on one side, the northeast side there are 4 4' x 15' windows and on the the other side they are about the same size but are more of a thick glass, so less light will pour in...On top of that there are two rows of floursescent lights that span the gym...its an elementary school gym. And we are shooting on the vision 2 200T 7217

 

So our considerations revolve on dealing with this mixed lighting source. Do we let our daylight source, go blue? ( we will have direct sunlight coming in during the morning on the north east side, so we will shoot that area out first and then put our units there to try and mimic that source) and try to correct the flourescents, while CTBing our units? and then time out the daylight?

 

or should we put plus green on our units, and 85 filter on the lens? and time out the flourescents?

 

is there anyway to attempt to measure color temp without a meter? Can you correct flourescents?

 

our limitations are we have no gels big enough to correct these windows, our biggest units are 1200 HMI and 575 HMI and we cannot switch out the tubes in the gym.

 

If both of these solutions seem to work depending on the the desired look, then am I safe in saying that timing out the daylight, while attempting to correct flourescents would probably have a cooler look and maybe even a sicklier loo...and the timing out of the flourescents would have a warmer look?

 

 

 

Thanks for your input

 

Robert

[Chris Cooke]

It would take about the same amount of time and effort to just put Daylight kino tubes in all the flourescent fixtures rather than buying and cutting up a whole bunch of CTB and then somehow clamping the gels up there (I've used paper clips for this before). Your sources will match each other a lot better this way. Also renting kino tubes will be similar in price to buying 5 rolls of CTB.

Your HMI's will be perfect here (no correction required) and then you can buy some CTB for your tungsten sources.

Another option is to just kill the flourescents all together. You might have enough fill coming in through the thick glass with the aid of some carefully placed HMI's.

The sun will look great pouring into the gym but you have to have a perfect sunny day and then be ready to shoot at the exact time when the sun is in position.

[Matt Sandstrom]

i'd find my primary light source, filter on he lens for that and let the rest be whatever color it is. as long as you don't get many different colors of light hitting the subjects i feel mixed light just adds character and realism. if it's a daytime shoot i think the windows and your hmi's will overpower the tubes quite easily so just let them be as green as they want.

 

/matt

[David Mullen ASC]

The gym may look more interesting with the overheads off and just lit with the windows.

[Kristoffer Newsom]

I'd also suggest trying to light the scene with the overheads off.

 

If you need the ambient light to go up, turn them on, and then use CTB and HMI's on your subjects.

 

good luck.

 

-Kris