White balancing when you're not too sure about your light temperatures...

sheeep

sheeep

Active member
I'm gonna be filming a few interviews using a worklight setup under some flourescent lights.

When whitebalancing outside, it's fairly easy, because the light is spread quite nicely. I'm sorta clueless as to how to whitebalance in a studio type setup.

Should I put the white paper/card I'm balancing off of in the position where the person sitting would be, zoom in on it, and balance it that way? That makes the most sense to me.

Thanks a bunch.
 
I'll probably end up turning them off just to cut down on the ambient and give a more controllable area. I'm either filming the interviews in a gym (mostly daylit), a classroom (either flourescent or daylit, my choice), or a soundproof music room. If I do use the soundproof room I'll only be able to use the flourescent lights.
 
My vote is for the classroom. Can you place your talent near the windows and just use a bounce to fill with dalight. Do you have CTB (Blue) gels for your worklights ? You can gel your work lights and bounce them into a 4'x 4' ft piece of foam core as key light or fill as well. Just a thought. Simple set up....Turn off all overhead floros like you mention. The gym might be nice, I love the warm look that the wood floors provide. This of course depends on your framing.
 
Yeh, it sounds like more important than actually white balancing your camera is controlling the location lights to so you don't have uncontrolled mixed lighting temperatures. You can always color correct if your white balance is off, but it's really hard to fix mixed temps.

Anyway, in your first scenario, you want to turn off the flos before you white balance. You have it correct, the gray/white card needs to be where the talent will be, under that key light.
 
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