HMI's on skintones

Artyom Zakharenko · April 9, 2012

Hey there everybody...

For some reason i find skintones look like green plastic when lit with HMI's.. because of this ive decided not to use HMI's anymore to light faces. But if you do, how do you handle it?

Thanks !

Daniel John Lee · April 9, 2012

Are you making sure the ballasts are always on full intensity?

Adrian Sierkowski · April 9, 2012

I tend to add 1/8 CTO on all my HMIs (on top of whatever other corrections are needed to make all the HMIs look the same). You'd need a color meter, but you may do well with a little minus green now and again; depending on the light.

I agree with you too, btw, I never liked HMIs or Kinos/Floros on skin-tones; hence why I try to stay all tungsten unless there's a specific need for the aforementioned (day exts, or matching the look/feel of an office ect.)

Artyom Zakharenko · April 9, 2012

It's not only the color, it's also the quality of the light, it kinda gives this 'flat chemical plastic'/unreal flesh effect.. like DSLR's

same goes for kinoflo's yes, but then purple instead of green... hallelujah to tungsten!

Torben Greve · April 10, 2012

How about the Arri L7-C? Any of you tried that... I mean since you can dial in the color wouldnt that be optimal?

Adrian Sierkowski · April 10, 2012

From what I've seen of LEDs, there is a long way to go before they look "right," to my eye. This includes the Arris. It has also been discussed before. I believe the user Guy Holt has posted up some very nice comparison tests of LED fixtures, if you care to do a search.

Artyom Zakharenko · April 10, 2012

wow... pretty cool, looks like no more gel filters in future

dont have that much experience with leds cant tell

Torben Greve · April 10, 2012

Yeah I read that Guy Holt post, which is on all the major forums. But to me that seemed more like a lot of sales talk / paper talk, rather than actual battlefield tests / comparison tests.

However in the meantime I learned that even though the De Sistis were announced last year, apparently the pricepoint is not out till after NAB this year O_o

In regards to LEDs... since you can control the L7 in detail, wouldn't that solve the spike problem that most LED suffer from? From what I read it sounded like ARRI had a nice color rendition in those lamps. And who wouldn't want key lights that consume very little wattage :D

Adrian Sierkowski · April 10, 2012

Probably not. You'll always get a spike because you're dealing with a discontinuous source- no matter what. Now, whether it'll be overall perceptible, or horrible is another issue entirely. But, for me, LEDs just don't look right and still spike,and I'd be you, even the new L7 will show some issue on a color meter.

As for guy, yeah, it comes off as weird, but he's a smart guy and the information on his posts is available elsewhere. I believe there was a special on the LEDs in American Cinematographer at some point last year. someone else may know better, though.

Mathew Rudenberg · April 10, 2012

Art Adams posted an interesting LED comparison. Basically he set the white balance to tungsten and shot a variety of LEDs and one KinoFlo with the same whitebalance. This illustrates the color difference you can expect if you're planning to use these units in a tungsten dominant environment.

Here's the comparison. To my eye it looks like the MoleLED is the clear winner.

Here's the article.