Matching LED practicals and daylight in a scene.

[Marco S King]

Hey guys and girls

 

 

I have an upcoming shoot where I need to light a few different office scenes in a way that looks modern, clean and uniform. The location we have has a good all around ambience that sits at approximately 4900-5800K throughout the day (this warmth comes from a large building across the road that bounces a lot of light into the space. Two space lights, balanced to daylight and sent through an overhead 8x8 butterfly with full silk, will light the boardroom scene, and for other scenes there will be a lot of practicals that will provide the motivation for areas where the windows wont be close enough to justify using them as a key source. These will be augmented with kinoflo's.

 

In order to maintain the near-future, clean, uniform look I have opted to got for using daylight balanced practical sources only. My natural inclination is to use LED lightbulbs in the light fixtures. These include standing lamps, frosted balls that litter one of the spaces, and desk lamps.

 

Here is my conundrum. I have searched the length and breadth of my city to find daylight LED's that come closer to 5000k so as to match the ambient light coming from the windows, however all I can find are 6000-7000k bulbs.

 

Since the windows will almost always be in shot (there are a lot of windows) and the ambient light in the room is quite warm, I am trying to figure out how to have a uniform color temperature between that light and the practicals.

 

Are there bulbs on the market that can achieve this slightly warmer temperature?

 

How would you go about matching these two different light sources.

 

Do any of the major industry LED manufacturers make daylight balanced bulbs, as Kino-flo does with their CFL's?

 

I'm not using the CFL's because I cant find any in time, and most of the practical fixtures are too small to fit them.

 

 

Thanks

[Mark Kenfield]

All of the LED bulbs I've seen (even the more expensive ones), are still pretty yucky for colour cast. And tend to have definite green or magenta tints to them.

You can use the LEDs and gel them to pull out the green/magenta, or you can use tungsten and gel them to pull out the warmth. You're going to get better colour from the tungsten ones, but the coolness of the LEDs might make them more conducive to gelling.

Your other option might be to use the LEDs as is, but then add a little green or magenta to the spacelights and the lights you send through the windows, in order to match them to the LEDs.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Mark Kenfield

[Albion Hockney]

https://www.quasarscience.com/collections/a-series-led/products/a-series-medium-base-household-bulbs?variant=3582653635

 

6000k only still

[Phil Rhodes]

The problem you're going to have is that artificial light of any type won't match the daylight regardless, because daylight is infinitely variable and constantly changing.

[Tristan Noelle]

You could go old school with some BCAs, 4800K incandescent.

 

 

Of course, they're 250w so they get hot, and you'll need good quality practical sockets, hopefully ceramic. And while dimmable, their color will get warm quickly.

 

Tristan

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Problem I have with BCAs, aside from the fact they look too greenish most of the time (the non Osram ones at least) is that they don't last very long and you really can't throw them in a lamp on the scene as it'll melp pretty badly. Hell even yesterday we had issued with PH211s as the socket on the lamps were designed for "13W" LEDS. Melted within 2 minutes of use!

 

The Quasars are nice. Kino has a new one out as well (LED) but they also make CFLS which aren't horrible (though also not bright).

 

Also 6000K -v- 5600K (or so daylight) will be fine. The perception of color with kelvin is really only super noticeable the lower you go (e.g. 2700 to 3200) and not so much 5600 to 6000.

[JD Hartman]

For the heat issue, if the shade is deep enough, you could try a porcelain socket extender.

https://www.1000bulbs.com/product/5842/ELEC-243000.html?msclkid=3856cf6a622c12eaa5e395e5296c30d3

[Marco S King]

Thanks for the advice guys

 

I went for gelling the household LED's with 1/8th CTO and 1/8th Minus green gels, added and eight CTO to my daylight kino's and balanced the spacelights to those as well. This slightly warmer color cast has given me a much closer match to the ambient light in the room.

 

The next problem I faced on the first day of shoot were the giant astroturf carpet and artificial green wall which were spilling all sorts of putrid green over actors faces, when not in shot I had them covered in black or white material or polyboards but still had to add a -2 CC to the white balance on the Alexa mini.

 

Albion Hockney. Those Quasar science lights look like they are the exact thing I have been searching for. I think I will be ordering a few to test out and see how they render on screen. 95 CRI rating, amazing.