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White Balance Temps to Simulate Conditions and/or Locations


Tim Pipher

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When shooting on a stage, any suggestions regarding what white balance temperatures should be used to simulate different conditions/locations (indoors or outdoors, night or day, sunrise or midday, sunny or cloudy, office or living room, moonlight etc.)?


I find lots of charts online showing different white balance temperatures for various conditions, but I suspect they're more for actually shooting in those conditions, rather than trying to simulate those conditions on a stage.


In case it makes a difference, we're using Varicam 35 cameras, Fujinon Cabrio 20-120 zoom lenses, and can adjust light colors using a Digital Sputnik DS 1 LED.


Thanks!


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Just depends on the look you want and what color temperature your neutral white light is. For example, yesterday I was on a stage set shooting a day interior where I had quasar tubes in my fluorescent practical fixtures and Skypanels for soft overhead skylight above my windows and above a skylight, and then big tungsten units for sunlight.

 

I wanted the tungsten sunlight to be warm and the skylight and fluorescents to be cooler. I could have gelled the tungsten with CTO for warmth but since they were at full spot, I would have had to deal with the possibility of melting the gel without using heat shield. So it was easier to just make the Skypanels and quasars more blue and then set the camera to something like 4300K instead of 3200K to make the tungsten sunlight effect go warmer.

 

So whether you are shifting the image warmer or colder by changing the color temperature setting depends on the color temperature of what a theoretical white light would be. It’s all about a relative effect.

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David gave a very good description. Here's the video monitor with the camera info from a scene we shot a few weeks ago.

 

This scene was for sunset, with the director requesting the sun in the frame. Since the sun (nor the clouds) did not position themselves at my request, we placed a 5k tungsten lamp outside the window, but right in the frame. This was augmented with 650w tungsten fresnels in the interior, and unlike David's description, there is no mixed color in this scene, save for some little bluer ambience I think.

 

So, in this case, tungsten light, 9000k.

post-4387-0-59679900-1534667241_thumb.jpg

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