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warm white


tristan

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Balancing what to what? The flos to tungsten or daylight? Or daylight or tungsten to fluorescent?

 

2700 deg. K is going to be about 1/4 CTO warmer than tungsten, and the flos will also have a green spike of about 1/4 plusgreen. I'm sure there are tables for this, but the reality always is that you end up adjusting the "prescribed" correction a little bit to acommodate the actual tubes and set. The best way to be prepared is to carry 1/4 density of each: CTB, CTO, plusgreen and minusgreen. You might want a little 1/8 density of the plus/minusgreen for good measure.

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Basically I want to balance to 3200K.

 

I had tested the light on set without any correction and i expected the light to be little warm than 3200K however the TC result show the warm white light had green cast on the talent face which really look like ghost :o

 

do u think I should add 1/8 minus green on the light?

 

Thanks

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Yes, 1/8 or 1/4 minusgreen will compensate for the green spike in the flo's spectrum. You'll have to test it for yourself to find the exact amount of color correction. You could use a color meter, or shoot tests. I use my relatively cheap digital camera as color meter, because it "sees" the green in fluorescents very well.

 

Sometimes adding a little green-red correction to a light can subtly alter its orange-blue balance, and vice-versa. So you might find that adding the right minusgreen also makes the light a little warmer, requiring a little blue correction as well. Trial and error.

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No, the digital camera does not give you a numeric value for cc or color temp -- it gives you a VISUAL of what the color looks like. The camera can be preset for tungsten balance, and you simply "audition" color correction gels in front of the lamp until it looks correct on the LCD display. It helps to have both tungsten and fluorescent lamps in frame, each aimed at a similar subject such as white or skin tone. When you find the gel pack that makes the flo match the tungsten unit, you're good to go.

 

With a color meter giving you a numeric value for color correction, you still have to audition different strengths of gel until you find the right amount of correction. A "cheat sheet" or chart can tell you what gel densities correspond to the point values on the meter, but you still have to take a reading to verify it. Using a digital camera is just a more visual way of accomplishing the same thing.

 

I should point out that my camera (Sony DSC P-32) tends to exaggerate differences in color temperature, meaning what you see is even more extreme than what you get on film typically. This makes it even more useful as a color meter, because its tolerance for color temperature is so slim.

 

Another trick I use for finding the proper minusgreen gel is to view both the tungsten (or daylight) and the fluorescent source through a clean piece of full CTO gel. The CTO elimates the blue wavelegths, making it easier to see the green. Then have someone add minusgreen gel to the flo until it matches. This technique is obviously not scientific and also much more subjective, but I swear it's never failed me.

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