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I'm curious as to how DP's that work with film stock go about white balancing. Since the WB is fixed do they use gels on the lights set up? Or do they use filters in front of the lens to achieve the desired effect? If so, how incremental is the filtration?

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Yes, yes, and/or they also can change it in the transfer for dailies or in the final color-correction.

 

Regarding gels on lights, first of all, the main reason you do that (other than for creative color effects) is to match them to the surrounding color temperature. If they don't match, the playing with the white balance in post or in the camera with filters isn't going to fix that mismatch.

 

So if you are in a situation where there are no natural sources to match to, like in a stage set or a night interior, then odds are low that you are going to, let's say, put Full CTB (blue) gel on every tungsten lamp and then use daylight film stock -- you'd just use tungsten film stock.

 

As for using a Full Blue correction filter (80A) on the camera lens to correct tungsten light to daylight so you can use daylight stock, versus using Full Orange (85B) on the camera lens to correct daylight to tungsten so you can use tungsten stock, the second is more common because the blue filter loses 2-stops of light but the orange filter loses only a 2/3-stop of light.

 

Hence why it is easier to use tungsten stocks outdoors in daylight where there is plenty of exposure for an orange correction filter but harder to use daylight stocks at night with a blue correction filter because generally light levels are lower.

 

So the most common scenario is to use daylight stock in daylight situations, or tungsten stock with an 85B filter, and then use tungsten stock in tungsten situations. You could also use daylight-balanced lights and daylight stock.

 

But there are all sorts of variations possible. Some cinematographers use tungsten stock in daylight with only a partial correction, like an 81EF, for a cooler effect (you'd want to shoot a grey scale for dailies using the full correction so that it looked neutral in daylight and the scene that followed with the partial correction looked cooler in comparison to the grey scale). And some use the partial correction in order to gain a little more exposure over an 85B filter (since there is barely a 1/3-stop difference between the 81EF and the 85B, you'd be more likely to use the LLD filter, which is mainly a super Skylight filter) and shoot the grey scale and scene under that same filter for a neutral balance. And some just don't shoot with any orange correction and have it all timed to neutral -- film negative has enough color information to handle that.

 

And of course, some cinematographers use uncorrected tungsten stock in daylight for a blue effect (like for day-for-night work) and some use daylight stock in tungsten light for an orange look ("Backdraft" for example shot all of their big fire sequences on daylight stock so that the fire rendered more orange-red.)

 

I've played with color timing of dailies by using different filters when shooting the grey scale and then pulling the filter for the scene -- it's similar in video to white balancing using a pale colored card. I've put a pale blue filter on the camera for the grey scale, or a pale blue gel on the light inside, and then pulled it for the scene and gotten a warm look because the timer had to add warmth to the image in order to get the grey scale to look neutral.

 

I always shoot a sign after the grey scale that says things like "COLOR: SLIGHT WARM GOLDEN TONE" or whatever.

 

Keep in mind that you normally don't look at a negative image, the negative has to be converted in same way into a positive image for viewing, so there is always a color-correction opportunity here to balance the image. Without any grey scales or notes, a colorist is likely to just go for a neutral balance no matter how you shot the original, especially for outdoors footage.

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Are you asking about matching lights to the color temperature of the location?

 

As for matching the color temperature of the scene to the film stock, as I said, negative film has to go through a color-correction step to be viewed as a positive image, so that is one point where setting the color balance can take place, besides camera filters. In other words, even if you use film stocks and filters to match the setting, you only have to get into the ballpark because the timing of dailies or the final project gives you the opportunity to get a neutral balance if that's what you want.

 

As for matching lights to the setting, you can use a color meter if you want to be precise, though the truth is that unless the location has artificial lighting with color spikes that are hard to see by eye, you can usually get close to matching a light to the location just with gels and your eyes and/or monitor (if shooting digitally.) In other words, let's say you use an HMI in a day scene and it feels too blue compared to the natural ambience, you will add some degree of CTO gel to the HMI to get a closer match, and often if it matches to your eye, it is close enough for practical purposes.

 

You can find out the published MIRED shift of color correction gels and filters when you need to convert "x" color temperature to "y" color temperature, if you know those two values.

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There are no "chemical" means of changing the color balance on the stock, unless you mean "photo-chemical" means, i.e. making a corrected print using RGB printer light adjustments. But, yes, most people get the balance close and rely on the latitude of the negative stock to correct the image when later making the positive, whether that means a print or a transfer to video, or a color-correction of a scan.

 

As for correcting the lights, it all depends on whether you can correct every light, artificial and natural, because if you can't, then you'll have a mix of color temperatures. You can't really correct a shot with mismatched colored lighting within the same frame and then correct it all to match each other later. I mean, with digital post tricks, sometimes you can come close to fixing mismatches... but it is a lot of work and often only partially successful.

 

Plus there are practical issues -- let's say you have twenty lights and they all need the same correction gel. Well, if they are the only lights illuminating the set, it would easier to just put one correction filter on the lens than to gel the twenty lights. Or maybe it would be fine to just do that correction in post. A common example is a scene shot in a supermarket at night under hundreds of greenish fluorescents -- if there are too many tubes to swap out, then you might have to add green to your extra lighting augmenting the overheads to match, and then you have the choice of using a magenta camera filter to cancel the overall green, or to correct out the green in post with color timing / color-correction. The second option is very commonly done.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Generally, I find film more versatile with regards to handling different colour temperatures (within daylight) compared to digital. If you're shooting outdoors with digital and you want reasonably accurate colour rendition, you have to readjust the white balance if the shooting location / situation changes from full sun to shade to cloudy. If you have a daylight balanced film however, it will handle sunny conditions, shadow and overcast without any need for adjustment (unless you're going for a certain look - warmer / cooler etc).

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Film sees the changes in color temp from sun to shade just as well as a digital camera does, it's just that with film, you have to have some sort of conversion step from negative to positive, either a print or a scan or a video transfer, and at that point, you can also color-correct for those differences. But it is not correct that film somehow renders all of those different color temps throughout the day as one color and therefore needs no scene-to-scene correction later -- it is mainly that you are seeing those changes live on your digital camera and feel the need to then correct the color immediately since there will probably be no dailies step.

 

So if you were shooting a digital camera with a lot of color information, let's say 12-bit ProRes 4444 in Log-C on an Alexa, you could treat it like film and shoot all day at one daylight color temp setting and then fix the imbalances later if you have a colorist doing dailies. Conversely you could shoot film, develop it, and make a one-light dailies transfer based on one grey scale at the head of the roll and not have those changes corrected out.

 

So I don't really see a difference in this case between film or digital, both see color temp variations throughout the day and both may need to be corrected for that if you want better matching. The difference is mainly when and where you do that matching, in camera, in dailies, in the final color-correction.

 

Film has a bit more color richness to it but that only means it sees those changes throughout the day more clearly, not less clearly, so what you are really saying then is that the latitude of color negative makes it easier to fix those differences later in post, not that the latitude eliminates the need to make corrections in the first place. Otherwise you'd be arguing that the advantage of film is that it is less sensitive to color variations.

 

Where there is a bigger difference is when you are shooting with a lower-end digital camera with poorer color information, less dynamic range, and more compression in the recording -- with that sort of camera, you may be happier to balance the color temps throughout the day pre-recording since you will have less latitude in post to color-correct. Plus probably you aren't doing some sort of dailies color-correction anyway.

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Very good points David. This might be going slightly off topic but when I do still photography, I find that daylight balanced slide films are generally pretty good at handling different colour temperatures under natural daylight illumination. Take Fuji Velvia for example - Ive photographed landscapes with that film stock in both sunny and overcast conditions. Yes there may be some colour temperature changes recorded by the film but to my eyes, the colours always look natural in either of those light conditions. I was wrong for mentioning shade in my previous post. I admit that daylight balanced films will render rather cool looking images in shade, requiring some kind of colour correction. But for sunny and overcast conditions, I'm more than happy with the results I get straight from the film - (from the exposed transparency.)

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I reckon that the difference is that you look at stills one at a time and in those few seconds the brain adapts, but a change of colour temperature is much more noticeable across a cut. 1/24 of a second isn't long enough to accommodate the change.

Having just scanned 5000 slides I think the differences are more noticeable.

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Very good points David. This might be going slightly off topic but when I do still photography, I find that daylight balanced slide films are generally pretty good at handling different colour temperatures under natural daylight illumination. Take Fuji Velvia for example - Ive photographed landscapes with that film stock in both sunny and overcast conditions. Yes there may be some colour temperature changes recorded by the film but to my eyes, the colours always look natural in either of those light conditions. I was wrong for mentioning shade in my previous post. I admit that daylight balanced films will render rather cool looking images in shade, requiring some kind of colour correction. But for sunny and overcast conditions, I'm more than happy with the results I get straight from the film - (from the exposed transparency.)

 

Well, overcast situations can provide some lovely images. As one teacher succinctly put it many years ago, an overcast day will give you much more saturated colors because the combination of the sun behind the clouds is creating one large, soft source. Whereas a sunny day is entirely different. So if you are photographing green trees on both days, you with notice a significant difference in "lightness."

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I reckon that the difference is that you look at stills one at a time and in those few seconds the brain adapts, but a change of colour temperature is much more noticeable across a cut. 1/24 of a second isn't long enough to accommodate the change.

Having just scanned 5000 slides I think the differences are more noticeable.

 

With slide film it probably does produce different effects... but with negative still film, one has to wonder if the printer has 'adjusted' the color balance behind the scenes.

 

I know I have some very 'bluish' slides for the few slides I ever shot, on those overcast days or 'northern' light shots.

 

For the wedding biz, the bride's white dress was the usual 'key' and would be a problem if the dress was actually an off white of some sort...

 

Then there was the time the Wife was shooting in Jerusalem at noon, under a 'muslin' canopy... there was a distinct, and somewhat unfortunately yellowish/brown cast... Since she was shooting digital by that time, it was a simple matter of getting an adjustment for one shot, and the a Photoshop macro for the rest in batch mode...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Film sees the changes in color temp from sun to shade just as well as a digital camera does, it's just that with film, you have to have some sort of conversion step from negative to positive, either a print or a scan or a video transfer, and at that point, you can also color-correct for those differences. But it is not correct that film somehow renders all of those different color temps throughout the day as one color and therefore needs no scene-to-scene correction later -- it is mainly that you are seeing those changes live on your digital camera and feel the need to then correct the color immediately since there will probably be no dailies step.

 

So if you were shooting a digital camera with a lot of color information, let's say 12-bit ProRes 4444 in Log-C on an Alexa, you could treat it like film and shoot all day at one daylight color temp setting and then fix the imbalances later if you have a colorist doing dailies. Conversely you could shoot film, develop it, and make a one-light dailies transfer based on one grey scale at the head of the roll and not have those changes corrected out.

 

So I don't really see a difference in this case between film or digital, both see color temp variations throughout the day and both may need to be corrected for that if you want better matching. The difference is mainly when and where you do that matching, in camera, in dailies, in the final color-correction.

 

Film has a bit more color richness to it but that only means it sees those changes throughout the day more clearly, not less clearly, so what you are really saying then is that the latitude of color negative makes it easier to fix those differences later in post, not that the latitude eliminates the need to make corrections in the first place. Otherwise you'd be arguing that the advantage of film is that it is less sensitive to color variations.

 

Where there is a bigger difference is when you are shooting with a lower-end digital camera with poorer color information, less dynamic range, and more compression in the recording -- with that sort of camera, you may be happier to balance the color temps throughout the day pre-recording since you will have less latitude in post to color-correct. Plus probably you aren't doing some sort of dailies color-correction anyway.

 

 

So in the sense of lower end digital cameras with an 8 bit 4:2:0 signal (Say the a6000 for example) it's best to just have the color balance "on the money" as opposed to balancing it to capture the color of the location? Would it be a bad idea to shoot everything whilst maintaining a 5600k color balance?

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It would be best to get the color you want in camera, whether that means with a color cast or neutral, just depends on the look you want, with the caveat that if you can achieve the color effects you want while working with the camera set to a higher color temperature, which may mean using daylight balanced lights or some degree of blue gels or blue filters, you'd end up with a cleaner blue channel.

Either way, if you can get the color and noise level to your satisfaction in the original so that minimal to no color-correction is required in post, you're going to have a better time if dealing with a very compressed recording with only 4:2:0 color information.

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Either way, if you can get the color and noise level to your satisfaction in the original so that minimal to no color-correction is required in post, you're going to have a better time if dealing with a very compressed recording with only 4:2:0 color information.

 

Especially if you wind up working on a project where you are doing a lot of work with a post lab that charges by the hour. The more you get right in-camera, the less time you will spend doing color correction and the more money you will save.

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Quoted: "(you'd want to shoot a grey scale for dailies using the full correction so that it looked neutral in daylight and the scene that followed with the partial correction looked cooler in comparison to the grey scale"

 

What is meant by "shooting a grey scale" ? I currently understand grey scale to be the brightness, from black to white.

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A grey scale often has a large area of 18% grey, in addition to the 'scale' from black to white. With film it is common practice to shoot a few seconds of the grey card at the head of each roll and/or scene in order to let the dailies timer know what your exposure and color intentions were .

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  • 3 months later...

Hi everybody,

I'd like to know, instead, how can you catch the real on location temperature. I mean: often it happens you are in a location (never mind if you are in an indoor outdoor set) where there is a great natural lighting.

Shortly, if you have to film without any lighting, catching "the magic light moment" of your location, how your camera can catch exactly or approximately the temperature lighting on set (and you can see with your eyes)? Many filmmaker have not a color meter (costs at least $ 1,500...) how have you to set your white balance?

 

Thanks for a reply!

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Well, if you are shooting digital, you can see the effect of your camera's white balance setting on the monitor.

 

If you are shooting film, you just decide if the color is daylight, tungsten, or in between. Film has enough latitude that you can shoot tungsten film under daylight and correct it in post, or if you think the color is halfway to daylight, you can use a halfway correction filter like an 81EF instead of a full correction like the 85. Again, you can correct the rest of the way in post.

 

In other words, it's not important that you "exactly" correct the color temperature in camera, you just have to get close enough that you can color-correct it later.

 

Plus, often for creative reasons, you don't want an exact match -- perhaps a scene in the deep shade of the forest feels cool to you so you don't want to actually match the color temperature, you want a setting that leaves some coldness to the light. And often a sun set moment has very orange sunlight and most people don't want to match that color temperature exactly either and thus correct out the orange, they want to capture that orange color which means leaving the color temp of the camera or stock more at standard daylight 5600K.

 

Same goes for a warm candlelight scene -- you usually don't want to match that color temperature, you want the candlelight to feel warm, not neutral white.

 

Capturing the colors of natural light does not require a color temperature meter. Color temperature meters are useful for measuring what you can't see with your own eyes, like how much green is in a fluorescent so you can use the correct gel on another light to match it to an existing light.

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Hi everybody,

I'd like to know, instead, how can you catch the real on location temperature. I mean: often it happens you are in a location (never mind if you are in an indoor outdoor set) where there is a great natural lighting.

Shortly, if you have to film without any lighting, catching "the magic light moment" of your location, how your camera can catch exactly or approximately the temperature lighting on set (and you can see with your eyes)? Many filmmaker have not a color meter (costs at least $ 1,500...) how have you to set your white balance?

 

Thanks for a reply!

While I have no experience with this product....

 

$2.99!!!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/white-balance-meter/id834425480?mt=8

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Well, if you are shooting digital, you can see the effect of your camera's white balance setting on the monitor.

 

So, i should set up WB until you find the point where the color of the light that I see with my own eyes on location is the same as what I see in the control warning, if I understand correctly? And of course, control monitor should be rightly calibrated...( I use a Lilliput 7" but now I'm gonna utilize an iPad Pro).

 

If you are shooting film, you just decide if the color is daylight, tungsten, or in between. Film has enough latitude that you can shoot tungsten film under daylight and correct it in post, or if you think the color is halfway to daylight, you can use a halfway correction filter like an 81EF instead of a full correction like the 85. Again, you can correct the rest of the way in post.

 

Okay.

 

In other words, it's not important that you "exactly" correct the color temperature in camera, you just have to get close enough that you can color-correct it later.

 

Plus, often for creative reasons, you don't want an exact match -- perhaps a scene in the deep shade of the forest feels cool to you so you don't want to actually match the color temperature, you want a setting that leaves some coldness to the light. And often a sun set moment has very orange sunlight and most people don't want to match that color temperature exactly either and thus correct out the orange, they want to capture that orange color which means leaving the color temp of the camera or stock more at standard daylight 5600K.

 

Of course, anyway this is something others: I this post I wanted only to know how to catch the mood I see and not how to modify it.

 

Same goes for a warm candlelight scene -- you usually don't want to match that color temperature, you want the candlelight to feel warm, not neutral white.

 

Ach, sorry, I didn't understand.... if I "don't want to match that color temperature..." why I should "want the candlelight to feel warm..."? The color temperature of a candle light is warm...

 

Capturing the colors of natural light does not require a color temperature meter. Color temperature meters are useful for measuring what you can't see with your own eyes, like how much green is in a fluorescent so you can use the correct gel on another light to match it to an existing light.

 

Okay, I need more experience about it... :unsure:

 

Many thanks David!

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Saying you want to capture the color in a location as your eye sees it is very subjective since the human eye is constantly adjusting for color balance, so you have to think creatively about it. You see candlelight as warm, so even if it's color temperature is around 2000K, if you set your camera to that, the flames would render white, not orange, so in this case you want to pick a color temperature closer to 3200K so that the flames will read as warm.

 

But in terms of capturing it the way your eyes see candle flame color, the problem is that if you are in an ordinary tungsten-lit room and someone brings in a birthday cake with candles burning, they will look quite warm to your eyes because they have gotten used to the color of the tungsten-lit room, and it's even more of a difference if you had been sitting in a daylight-lit room. But spend a few hours sitting in a room lit only by candles, and to your eye, they would look a lot less warm because your eye-brain would have compensated for that color temperature.

 

So saying you want to capture natural light "as your eye sees it" requires that you make a creative decision as to how your eye sees it, instead of how a camera sees it.

 

Here are some color temperatures of common light sources, from Wikipedia:

 

1,700K: Match flame, low pressure sodium lamps (LPS/SOX)

1,850K: Candle flame, sunset/sunrise
2,400K: Standard incandescent lamps
2,550K: Soft white incandescent lamps
2,700K: "Soft white" compact fluorescent and LED lamps
3,000K: Warm white compact fluorescent and LED lamps
3,200K: Studio lamps, photofloods, etc.
5,000K: Tubular fluorescent lamps or cool white/daylight compact fluorescent lamps (CFL)
5,500–6,000K: Vertical daylight, electronic flash
6,200K: Xenon short-arc lamp[3]
6,500K: Daylight, overcast
6,500–9,500K: LCD or CRT screen
15,000–27,000K: Clear blue poleward sky
And here are some numbers for sunlight from another site:
Sunlight: Sunrise of Sunset 2000K
Sunlight: One Hour After Sunrise 3500K
Sunlight: Early Morning or Late Afternoon 4300K
Average Summer Sunlight at Noon in the Mid-latitudes 5400K
So how warm that setting sun should look is a choice you have to make -- most people would set their cameras to daylight 5600K so that the setting sun would look warm and the blue skylight would feel cold.
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Saying you want to capture the color in a location as your eye sees it is very subjective since the human eye is constantly adjusting for color balance, so you have to think creatively about it. You see candlelight as warm, so even if it's color temperature is around 2000K, if you set your camera to that, the flames would render white, not orange, so in this case you want to pick a color temperature closer to 3200K so that the flames will read as warm.

 

But in terms of capturing it the way your eyes see candle flame color, the problem is that if you are in an ordinary tungsten-lit room and someone brings in a birthday cake with candles burning, they will look quite warm to your eyes because they have gotten used to the color of the tungsten-lit room, and it's even more of a difference if you had been sitting in a daylight-lit room. But spend a few hours sitting in a room lit only by candles, and to your eye, they would look a lot less warm because your eye-brain would have compensated for that color temperature.

 

So saying you want to capture natural light "as your eye sees it" requires that you make a creative decision as to how your eye sees it, instead of how a camera sees it.

 

Here are some color temperatures of common light sources, from Wikipedia:

 

1,700K: Match flame, low pressure sodium lamps (LPS/SOX)

1,850K: Candle flame, sunset/sunrise
2,400K: Standard incandescent lamps
2,550K: Soft white incandescent lamps
2,700K: "Soft white" compact fluorescent and LED lamps
3,000K: Warm white compact fluorescent and LED lamps
3,200K: Studio lamps, photofloods, etc.
5,000K: Tubular fluorescent lamps or cool white/daylight compact fluorescent lamps (CFL)
5,500–6,000K: Vertical daylight, electronic flash
6,200K: Xenon short-arc lamp[3]
6,500K: Daylight, overcast
6,500–9,500K: LCD or CRT screen
15,000–27,000K: Clear blue poleward sky
And here are some numbers for sunlight from another site:
Sunlight: Sunrise of Sunset 2000K
Sunlight: One Hour After Sunrise 3500K
Sunlight: Early Morning or Late Afternoon 4300K
Average Summer Sunlight at Noon in the Mid-latitudes 5400K
So how warm that setting sun should look is a choice you have to make -- most people would set their cameras to daylight 5600K so that the setting sun would look warm and the blue skylight would feel cold.

 

Uhm... great David,

my way to learn DP is still long... <_<

So, in digital, if i want to maintain the warm candle mood I have to check my control monitor setting up a right (subjective) value of WB; if I have rightly understand...?

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A lot of this is experience, and testing. Sometimes the simplest thing is to shoot everything with the camera set to 3200K, 5600K, or in between at 4300K-ish. That covers you in 90% of situations anyway, but from there you can decide if you need to pick numbers in between (some cameras don't even allow that) and whether you need to adjust the green-magenta axis.

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