Sodium Vapor

[Nadav Hekselman]

(Moved from incorrect forum)

 

Hey everyone,

 

I'm about to shoot a short on August with a lot of night exteriors. Most of the locations are streets in Tel-Aviv which are usually lit with the famous sodium vapor lights (the low pressure yellow-orange ones).

 

I'll probably be shooting on EX3 or F900 and looking for the best way to shoot those lights. I want to keep their yellowish quality but in a nice and natural way. According to some tests I did I fear a simple WB wont be enough and some camera or post manipulation are needed. any advice on camera settings? WB? post work?

 

Also I need some advice with gel configuration for matching 3200k light to the sodium ones. A configuration that will be nice for skin tone.

 

Any other advice on handling those vapors will be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[Jose Figueroa Baez]

Hey everyone,

 

I'm about to shoot a short on August with a lot of night exteriors. Most of the locations are streets in Tel-Aviv which are usually lit with the famous sodium vapor lights (the low pressure yellow-orange ones).

 

I'll probably be shooting on EX3 or F900 and looking for the best way to shoot those lights. I want to keep their yellowish quality but in a nice and natural way. According to some tests I did I fear a simple WB wont be enough and some camera or post manipulation are needed. any advice on camera settings? WB? post work?

 

Also I need some advice with gel configuration for matching 3200k light to the sodium ones. A configuration that will be nice for skin tone.

 

Any other advice on handling those vapors will be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

See if you can get the color cards for warming and cooling your image. Those can help you get a better control of how your image will come in that light by white balancing with those instead of a plain old white board. You can also try and fiddle with the colors in post keeping your mid tones at a more normal level and letting your highs go to the orange tones. That should give you an interesting image.

[David Rakoczy]

Nadav,

 

Double posting (posting the same question in two different lists) is a no no... it is better off where you originally posted (Lighting).

[Nadav Hekselman]

Nadav,

 

Double posting (posting the same question in two different lists) is a no no... it is better off where you originally posted (Lighting).

 

This was actually the first place I posted. I did it accidentally and couldn't find a way to erase it. Sorry.

[Santiago Benet]

Hi , recently I worked with DoP Dariuz Wolski and we had in our lighting package a series of sodium vapor fixtures ( 75w,250w, 400w, 1000w commercial fixtures ) wish he used instead of correcting tungsten lights and it looked great he told that he has been doing this for a while you can see it on the movie eagle eye it looks great. other people i have worked for use other formulas for example Robert Elswitt used a gel called lee 232 super white flame and it was similar to sodium vapor. But Wolski's formula is the exact same color tone and if you have a good grounded power you should have no flickering. I know that rosco has a corection for sodium vapor we used once with a 6 k hmi and looked good too. Now days source maker manufactures sodium vapor ballons. I did a commercial recently with RED cam and we had a night exterior and applied the Wolski way and it looked awesome. I hope this help you in some way.