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View Full Version : Lighting question - Tungsten v. Daylight


planet e
04-10-2008, 12:10 PM
Let's say you have a nice tungsten light kit. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

What is the best possible choice for reconfiguring for daylight. Can someone prioritize these for me?

RED-wise:

A) Is it better to filter the lens of your camera?

B) Is it better to filter the light kit itself?

C) Are these all poor substitute workarounds for buying HMIs or supplementing what I already own with some other daylight balanced kit? Or are A & B equally solid options?

Thanks for your wisdom...

donatello
04-10-2008, 01:16 PM
1st if this has to do with the Reds blue channel i would shoot 4k under tungsten .. i would NOT let any lights go below 2800kelvin ... = shoot tungsten ....

but if i HAD to choose between gel the lights or camera under tungsten i would go with the 80c (1 stop loss) on camera ...

FractureD
04-10-2008, 01:32 PM
I've always thought of it as a time constraint vs light loss issue.

Do you have the time to correctly gel all of your lights?
...or can you risk losing a stop (or more) of light?

It lends itself more to an *artistic* process especially if you have a CT Meter, but dropping a filter in is quick and ensures good results overall.

And HMIs lend their own brand of *issues*, they are great but not always the immediate fix.

cheers
-liam

Billy Summers
04-13-2008, 02:34 PM
We've found that it is "practically" imperative to use daylight when lighting a greenscreen...although, not all that practical.

David Mullen ASC
04-13-2008, 03:50 PM
Whether to gel the lights or filter the camera just depends on a case by case basis which approach is easier -- for example, maybe you have tungsten practical lamps in the scene (or a tungsten flashlight or candles) and it's not possible to gel them as well or you're unable to use blue photofloods in them, so you light everything to 3200K and then use a camera filter.

But let's say that the scene it just lit by two of your tungsten movie lamps -- well, in that case, it may be simple to just gel them.

Mike Prevette
04-13-2008, 07:27 PM
Not to mention the lack of daylight space lights. Having to go daylight for greenscreen is going to get me a kick in the ass from producers. A camera filter has it's drawbacks due to the loss in stop. Ughhh this is the one thing I'm not looking forward to about the Red.

Dominic Jones
04-14-2008, 01:47 PM
Just had a look at the footage from our recent MV shoot, lit to 3200K and half-filtered with an 80D to ~4000K.

Footage obtained keys perfectly well, although there is some noise in the green channel and even more in the blue. Above 2K, though, no severe problems with noise. The 2K doesn't look great and it going to need a noise removal step though...

Thanks to Bruce and several other posters for the info and advice before the shoot, which was pretty flawless...

And yes, it is a pain to have to shoot daylight in a chromakey studio - especially when you own a large tungsten package but no serious daylight temp lighting!

TheCriminalCrab
04-14-2008, 01:51 PM
Is a fact that the RED works better with daylight fixtures? or there is no problem at all?