Color Metering

[Tim Carroll]

How can we do this without purchasing a color meter? We have shot many different flavors of DV and always used the manual white balance to obtain accurate color. We have been shooting 16mm Black and White and never had to worry about the color temperature. We are now embarking on a 16mm color film project and are very concerned with getting the color right. It looks like we will be shooting with Kodak Vision II, tungstan balanced, but we will be using a variety of lights. Some Lowel Pros, some chinese lanterns with varying bulbs, some natural light. I understand the different color temperatures for different bulbs and for nature, but besides getting in the rough ballpark, is there a way to figure filteration more accurately than purchasing a color meter like the Minolta, which is about a thousand dollars.

 

Thanks for any and all input.

-Tim

[Mitch Gross]

Two options: the time-honored system of grabbing a swatch book and hold bits of gel up to your eye to see what matches best to your taste (what I do the most--and I own a color temp. meter) or you could bring along your MiniDV camera and a monitor and use it to compare color temps. It's much more sensitive to shifts in color than your eye, and it's also more sensitive than film, so it should help you see the issues.

[Tim Carroll]

Mitch,

 

Thanks for the input, what color temp meter do you have?

 

I can see some stuff, but I know my eye is not that good yet. Also, when it comes to color balancing for tungsten film, then I am really at a loss. I can see the orange of tungsten lights and the sick green of flourescent, and even some of the blue and purple in certain halogens, but knowing how to balance any of that to a tungsten film stock is not something that I feel I could do looking through color gels.

 

-Tim

 

PS: Also doing some reading about color meters and it seems that the meter tells you what gels to put over your different lights to get them all the same color, to match the color temp of your film stock. Is that usually how you do it? For some reason I thought the color meter would tell you what filter to use in your matte box, in front of your lens to get the right color on the exposed film.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't really use a color temperature meter.

 

It's not so much important that everything be balanced to 3,200K as it is that they be balanced to each other -- the differences are what matters. And a lot of that matching you can do by eye. If the lighting all ends up being 2,900K or 3,400K, it can easily be corrected in printing or in dailies just by shooting a gray scale under that lighting, assuming you want it to be neutral.

 

But as Caleb Deschanel once said, I rarely shoot with all my lights at 3,200K or all matching each other. That's a bit boring. I look for opportunities to mix colors.

 

The color temp meter is a technical thing. It's really only used for a few things: checking all of your HMI's during prep & pick-up to see if they are roughly matched; and checking odd lights like stadium lights and fluorescents when you have to gel a different type of light to match them. But somehow I've managed to make 26 features or so without pulling out a color temp meter myself.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

My camera will do it, but I've never really used the feature. So long as what you want to look the same looks the same, it generally comes out OK, at least on video.

 

I actually bought some quarter plus green gel the other day just so as to be able to put some different colours in while still having it be identifiably white light. Blue and orange is done to death.

 

Phil

[Mitch Gross]

Tim--

 

Don't stress yourself out. It's not that intense an issue. I have a Minolta Color Meter 2 that has been sitting in my meter case for about 10 years and pulled out about as many times. I stopped keeping a battery in it because by the time I would ever reach in there to use it the battery was always dead. So now I do what I would have to do anyway--borrow a 9v from the sound guy. :)

 

As David said, it's really more of a Gaffer's item than a DPs. Mostly use it for technical readings like matching HMIs. Pretty much everything else I do by eye. I reccomend having a lot of 1/2 and 1/4 CTO and CTB gels around so that you can layer it up to get the desired effect, and doing it by eye works just fine. Want to know what 3200 degrees looks like? Just turn on an inkie.

 

And a color meter can tell you what gel to use just as much as it can tell you what lens filter. They are the same thing. Know what a filter is? A bit of gel sandwiched between two plates of glass to protect it.

[Michael Nash]

Adding to the already good common-sense responses here...

 

I've been shooting for 15 years and gaffing a bit the last couple years, and I don't own a color meter. As a gaffer sometimes it's a liability when you're working with an uptight DP, but honestly, there are down-and-dirty tricks that let you get around a $1000 meter.

 

First off, the "recipe" for color correction gel is pretty simple: Full CTO on HMI's makes them tungsten balanced; full CTB on tungsten lights makes them daylight balanced. Of course ther are subtle differences in lights and gels that can lead to slight bit of error. But in general, if the color is "wrong" enough to be seen on film your eye will start to see it, too.

 

For finding the green in fluorescents, try looking through a piece of CTO gel or an 85 filter. This cancels out the blue wavelenghts and makes it easier to see the green. Compare it to a color-correct light source and see the difference.

 

And really, I've seen color meters come up WRONG more times than I've seen them help. Maybe those were just isolated events, but I don't automatically trust the meter when my eyes and experience tell me different.

 

But I've run across an even BETTER color meter, at least for practical use. My little $200 Sony digital still camera (DSC-P32) exaggerates differences in color temp more than film or video. Mismatches in color temp show up visibly and plain-as-day on the little LCD in my hand. Not exactly scientific, and you still have to make an educated guess at what gel you'll need to fix the problem. But on a practical level it works.