Question regarding approach for Office Lighting with budgetary constraints

DS Williams · January 27, 2014

Hello everyone!

I would really appreciate some opinions on this.

I am shooting a commercial for an insurance company soon. The commercial takes place entirely in a large office. I have attached a picture.

The office contains a series of overhead 4100k Fluorescent t8 globes, with a CRI of 75. the windows are slightly tinted, with a small bit of green cast.

Now obviously if I had the money, I'd replace the overhead fixtures with Kino k55 globes, which I assume would work fine, even if the ballasts are magnetic (am i mistaken?)

We do not have the money for a pre-rigging day to replace all the globes, so I'd decided to just either gel my kino fixtures, or basically build "ghetto" flos out of home depot fixtures using their overhead globes.

From what i gather, this will create an overall consistent color bias across the frame that can be timed out later, although the windows would go bluish.

Is there any other way to go about this? Suggestions would be welcome.

should i:

1.) Use 5500k Kino flos for all the foreground action to allow for great skintone? this will allow the windows to be correctly color balanced and let the background go greenish-warm..

2.) put their 4100k industrial phillips tubes into my kino flo fixtures and white balance to that

David Mullen ASC · January 27, 2014

If you are going to leave the fluorescents on and see them in the shot like that, then you'd probably want to just use the same brand/type of tubes in some Kinos to augment and white-balance to that. Unless that's just in the far background and the scene can be lit by window light with the overheads turned off, then you should use daylight Kinos.

DS Williams · January 27, 2014

David,

I GREATLY appreciate your reply, as you are a wealth of experience and knowledge.

Anyways, will placing an industrial flouro tube in a kino fixture change the color output, frequency ect? As kino balasts have a high and low output mode, i assume they are overdriving the globes?

We may just end up balancing to the interior lights ..but that still leaves the windows to have a bluish cast. we may just resolve that with a power window in post production.

And i an afraid that turning off the overhead lights will leave me without enough ambient light inside the office, and i have only rented kinos total because of our budgetary restraints.

Faheemkhan · January 27, 2014

Great information. Very useful to me. Actually I was searching the same since many days. Thanks.

Mark Kenfield · January 27, 2014

Yeah, I think matching the overheads in your Kinos is going to be your best bet on a budget.

Is it possible to rent Kino tubes en masse for instances like these where you need replace a hundred or so overheads? Where would you get them from? It would no doubt make this sort of a shoot much easier, I just can't think of anywhere I could look locally to source so many tubes for a one or two-day shoot.

DS Williams · January 27, 2014

Any more replies would be much appreciated! Have any of you encountered a situation like this one?

Freya Black · January 27, 2014

You could have problems with flicker if the ballasts are especially bad. Changing the tubes out won't change that.

If you have access to the locations then I would try and test with a video camera at the same frame rate as you intend to shoot at to see if there is any obvious flicker with the current tubes.

Also there are other makes of tubes than kinos out there these days that are available in various colour temperatures and are supposed to be somewhat accurate.

Having said all that, it looks like a lot of tubes to start swapping out, so it might be easier to just keep the existing tubes and work with that, perhaps adding some minus green if you are getting a nasty cast.

Freya