Color Temperatures

[Alvin Pingol]

I would assume that shooting in black-and-white would allow me to completely forget about any problems matching color temperatures. Is this true, or is it a common misconception?

 

For example, having a person standing next to a window (5600K) with tungsten fill (3200K) and some household fluorescents (6000K, incomplete spectrum) would be problematic shooting in color, and would require a lot of gels. In B/W, I would not even need to worry about this, right?

 

I'm hoping the answer is yes, but there have been a lot of common misconceptions that I have bought into. So I'm just double-checking this time.

 

Thanks.

[David Mullen ASC]

For the most part, it doesn't matter. Technically, the b&w stock is 1/3 of a stop more sensitive to daylight and technically a colored light will change the tonal value of a colored object, so I suppose if someone walked from daylight lighting to tungsten lighting, their skin tone might get slightly lighter (red on red) but it's nothing to be concerned about practically speaking. However, if you are using a red filter in daylight, you wouldn't need to use as red a filter under tungsten lights... besides, you wouldn't be cancelling out blue wavelengths from skylight anyway indoors, just making red objects lighter.

 

To put it another way, old b&w movies mixed carbon arcs and tungsten lighting all the time.

[Alvin Pingol]

Much thanks, Mr. Mullen. :)