Shooting live performance: mixed lighting

[fu-pow]

Hi-

I was shooting a band performance in bar last night and unfortunately the only house lights were blue and red. I couldn't get an accurate white balance because there was no white light. If I balanced in the red light I got the blues looking superblue, if I balanced in the blue light then the reds looked superred.

I think the video turned out OK because depending on who I was focusing on I would use the A and B white balance switch which had each one balanced for the certain color temperature. But I also ended up with some really weird shots where the people in the same shot are very different colors or super saturated.

Any ideas. I couldn't think of a way that I could effectively "split the difference." I guess I could have taken a white balance of a white card with a flash light or something.

Thanks

FP

[Gopher_Greene]

It always depends on what you want your final product to look like. Using a standard 3200K white balance would have left the blues blue and the reds red, if thats what you want then thats OK. If you want them to look natural under that light, it's probably not going to happen no matter what you do less then shooting two cameras, even then your missing too much of other light quantiies to ever correct it in post.

[fu-pow]

Thanks for the response. Looking through the DVX manual I see that you can either use presets or auto white balance that adjusts to the conditions. I think in this case one of the presets would have worked, however, I didn't know at the time how to change the temp of the preset. Oh well, live and learn, hopefully the client is happy with how it turned out.

FP

[khmuse]

Using auto white balance in a mixed color temperature situation is not going to give you a filmic look at all. The reality is that you have mixed lighting and that is what you should attempt to capture in your shots. It is after all a band in a bar.

The idea of white balancing off a card is fine, but you wouldn't want to illuminate it with a completely different color source (flashlight) as this just defeats the purpose of balancing. It sounds like you should have had a light source for your purposes (on camera light). Then you could have used the white balance technique with the illumination coming from your source.

[fu-pow]

Having a on-board light wasn't practical in this situation. The problem was a hypersaturation of the colors so I was looking for a "medium" color temperature that would have split the difference... the 3200K preset probably would have worked.

[kikndrummer]

I shoot live bands every once in a while and I do prefer having an on camera light to kick in a little white light but that's only effective if I'm fairly close to the stage. I have done this also by setting up a couple decent tungsten lights to the side of the stage and creatively adding a little bit to the stage...but I knew the show would be fairly low key and was able to safely set up a couple lights on stands. Depending on the venue you may have to use some scissor clamps and hang them from the ceiling.

2nd, if I have no other way to white balance and the preset just doesn't work for the room I try to find a little bleed from a light with a gel and zoom in on the white light and through it out of focus to get a wide area of white and balance off that....it seems to work well for me and I'm able to get some nice crisp accurate colors......but be sure to black balance first!!

Good luck!

edit: had to make some grammer corrections!! ...I actually can speak Eng'rish!!

[fu-pow]

Cool thanks for the suggestions. Especially about balancing to the gel bleed.

[Noel Evans]

Ive done a number of live shows. And one thing that I will impart for your reference is never trust the lighting guy or the house if they say something like "this is how it will be" assuming you get to test it out before hand.

Too many times what I was told the minimum illumination will be turned out different when they then decided to turn some overheads off etc.

Have to be a boy scout when shooting live shows.