color temperature

DS Williams · April 18, 2009

"You can't really choose wrongly when the colors are that saturated and intense. Take a DSLR into a night club and take some photos in tungsten and daylight mode and you'll see what I mean -- a red gelled lamp is going to be deep red either way."

But the thing is, I took a photo of an orange light. And when I balanced to tungsten, it looked exactly how I see it with my eyes, in other words orange. But when I balanced to daylight, it looks way too orange and not too realistic.

Is it that whenever you have artificial lights (no matter what their color: blue, magenta, green, orange etc like the lights at night clubs), then you balance to tungsten? And when you have natural light (the sun) then you balance to daylight?

Of course there will be a change in cast. Daylight balance is meant to emulate our eye's behavior in daylight, that is, adjusting to the prodominant blue cast of the light outside. So using this balance indoors under tungsten lamps will generate a red cast. The club lights you're looking at are obviously tungsten lights gelled blue, orange, ect, so using daylight balance will add a slight cast to the lights. Tungsten slopes gently towards the red/orange side of the spectrum, that is, the longer, low frequency wavelengths of light. At least in the research I've done, daylight shows a more equal spectral distribution of wavelengths, with blue being most dominant, as the sun's surface color temperature is somewhere around 6500k (don't quote me on it)

DS Williams · April 18, 2009

As again, like Walter said, don't over think this Sam. It's more simple than you think. It's a very easy concept to get confused about.

Edited April 18, 2009 by DS Williams

Chris Pritzlaff · April 20, 2009

But the thing is, I took a photo of an orange light. And when I balanced to tungsten, it looked exactly how I see it with my eyes, in other words orange. But when I balanced to daylight, it looks way too orange and not too realistic.

Looks like you answered your own question - if it looked right when you were balanced in tungsten and it was too orange for daylight then you should probably shoot with a Tungsten balence.

Jim Nelson · April 20, 2009

The thing is I don't know which film to use when you have magenta lights, green lights, red lights, blue lights etc? And I don't want them to look white because they don't look white to my eyes.

For the orange light I talked about earlier, tungsten balance was the best one, but what about for other colors?

Will I get a color cast if I have a green light for example and I use the wrong film? Will the green look more green? Same thing for magenta etc?

David Mullen ASC · April 20, 2009

The thing is I don't know which film to use when you have magenta lights, green lights, red lights, blue lights etc? And I don't want them to look white because they don't look white to my eyes.

For the orange light I talked about earlier, tungsten balance was the best one, but what about for other colors?

Will I get a color cast if I have a green light for example and I use the wrong film? Will the green look more green? Same thing for magenta etc?

Sometimes I wonder if you've actually been reading all of these posts because otherwise you wouldn't keep asking these questions. We've already answered this one about magenta, green, etc. gels on lights. Please reread the posts again.

Behind that red or green gel is either a tungsten or daylight lamp that is adding its color temp to the light, which is then having wavelengths subtracted by the gel to create a strong color effect. Ideally, you'd use film balanced for the type of light behind the gel, but the truth is that stage and nightclub lights use a mix of lamps -- most are tungsten, but some are daylight.

But the colored light is so strong that it is going to look similar on tungsten or daylight balanced film, it just may be slightly warmer or cooler depending on the film type and the lamp type. For example, perhaps on tungsten film, all the gelled tungsten lamps will render more closely to what your eyes are seeing but the daylight lamps will render a deeper blue.

A deeply colored light only contains a narrow range of wavelengths, so it is going to render that color more or less on either tungsten or daylight film.

You are simultaneously overthinking this and not reading what we have been posting carefully enough.

Just take a digital camera out to a night club with colored lighting and take the same shots in both tungsten and daylight settings and look at them.

As I said, 99% of the time, people shoot these scenes on 500 ASA tungsten balanced stock, mainly because they need the speed but because also most stage lights are tungsten other than some daylight follow spots and MAC projectors, strobes, which is why they often render bluer in scenes in movies.

Generally if a heavily magenta-gelled light turns out white on film it's because you've overexposed it, thus washing out the saturation of that color. Deeply colored lighting should not be exposed at "key" if you want to keep the color effect.

jeff woods · April 20, 2009

when you have magenta lights, green lights, red lights, blue lights etc?

There's no such thing as a "green light" (excluding LEDs), only a light source being passed through a filter material. You need to know the quality of the source, not the color of the output, and match to that.

For example, in my day job, I deal with Vari-Lite fixtures (arc and tungsten sources); when we shoot something, we take into consideration what the final product should look like.

If we want to focus more on the person lit with tungsten, we white balance to that. If we want to make sure that the wall accented with teal and blue looks right, we white balance to the VL fixtures (in full open white). However, that will make our person look VERY orange, so we either need to "blue up" our tungsten fixtures (and add in more since we are losing light by putting a filter in), or switch over to ONLY lighting with the VL fixtures, so all of the whites are the same.

I don't know if that's helpful, or if I just muddied the waters even more, but I wanted to throw in my two cents.

-j

John Sprung · April 20, 2009

When you have a really strong saturated green or magenta, etc., you could add or subtract an 85's worth, who would really care? It's mainly when we're in "normal" "white" light -- especially when we're lighting people's faces -- that we need to be precise about the color.

-- J.S.

Satsuki Murashige · April 20, 2009

Sometimes I wonder if you've actually been reading all of these posts because otherwise you wouldn't keep asking these questions. We've already answered this one about magenta, green, etc. gels on lights. Please reread the posts again.

Sam did the same thing with his "when to change lights" post: http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?sh...20&start=20. That's his personality.

Sam, you need to CAREFULLY read the well-thought out replies that you get from the people on this forum and THINK about what they're saying, BEFORE posting the same question again. You're testing the patience of a lot of good people who are trying to help you.