lighting sunlit room with tungsten

H

happysnapz

Member
Hi all,
when I am lighting people in a room that has sunlight (although not enough) and I then use tungsten lights to add to the overall light, what kind of gel should I use to balance the tungsten colour and keep the room looking the correct colour as well as the subject ? I always white balance on the subject when the lights are set up. When Using gels is this still the best workflow?
And when a gel says "half" or "quarter" what does that mean and how do I translate that information into my workflow.

or if anyone knows of a good link explaining this then that would also be appreciated.

many thanks
 
You should test the light with camera, first try the halogens without gels and see if the light is too warm, or if you balance for the halogen, the sunlight too unnaturally blue. There should be some color difference between the outside light and indoor light to make it look natural, we kind of expect the light to be a bit warm.

If the light is too warm try adding blue gels to the lights. The other, more expencive solution, of course, is to gel the windows. That would make balancing the light also easier, with less sunlight you do not need as much added light either. Actually this way you cut some sunlight and need not cut halogens, the other way around you cut just the lights you usually have not enough to begin with!

If the shot does not cover the whole room one solution is to shine a (powerful) halogen thru the window to simulate sunlight. It will not kill the real thing, but makes it warmer.
 
You might do better to put some 85ND or color temp orange with ND on the window(s) to make the outside light balance with tungsten. Whenever you gel lights to match for daylight, you loose a lot of punch from that light- at least a full stop to much more. The ND in the window gel takes down the outside light a couple of stops. This will help you light the interior and see out the window. You can buy rolls of this stuff and paper-tape it to the outside of the window, or some people like to cut the gel to fit and apply it with soapy water, and squeegy it on. Wind can cause some reflections in this stuff and cause it to be seen.

Another thing you can do is use a roll of roscolux, which is a black plastic , net-like material that will further drop the level of of light through the windows.
Time of day and the position of the sun can be observed and planned for in advance.

Good luck,

Jeff Patnaude:kali:
 
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To gel your lamps you are looking at a Full CTB. That gel will turn your 3200K Tungssten lights into 5600K, wich is roughly the same as outside light. You loose light with them but it can be workable in small locations and simple interview framing. Half and quarter gels are just that. Full CTB corrects tungsten to daylight, half CTB only does that conversion halfway, meaning, if you want your daylight t be slightly bluish, you can.

White balance to your lights, after you gell them, or leave the 5600K preset.
 
Firstly,
thank you all for your help, I appreciate your comments and I will take it all into account on a short film I have coming up.

I shoot many interviews on short notice at the whim of the subject and their associates so a lot of this location planning is impossible (as is the choice of location) and the time I have available in setting up lights in quite limited. So using a gel on my lights is all I have to work with most often.

so my 2 questions are-

1. taubkin - you say
"Half and quarter gels are just that. Full CTB corrects tungsten to daylight, half CTB only does that conversion halfway,"

So now do 2 half CTB equal 1 CTB?

2. If I want to cast colour from my gels onto the subject, do I whitebalance on the subject before or after I set up the final light with the coloured gel?

Thanks again
 
2. a) Shine halogens on the subject and white balance, white is white. b) put on the gels, light is gel color. If you want it that way, do not white balance again. But if you are using blue gels this would make the person blue, looks bad, sick.

I would propably leave the lights a bit on the warm side (half gels only) and balance somewhere in between daylight and lights. That way the sunlight is blueish and belivable, and added lights a bit warm, nice and with natural "indoor light" look.

Experiment before the shoot.
 
happysnapz said:
taubkin - you say
"Half and quarter gels are just that. Full CTB corrects tungsten to daylight, half CTB only does that conversion halfway,"

So now do 2 half CTB equal 1 CTB?
Click to expand...

Yeah, they do.


happysnapz said:
2. If I want to cast colour from my gels onto the subject, do I whitebalance on the subject before or after I set up the final light with the coloured gel?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

If you want to cast color, you whitebalance after the gel. But if you ae trying to color balance a scene, you would have to white balance afterwards. The white balance will compensate for whatever color cast your image has. So if you put a blue gel and white balance, blue will turn white, and no color effect will be seen. (wich can be a good thing, if you are only trying to balance your lights to shoot daylight...)

I hope it helps. This thing can get hard to explain in writing, especially when it's your second language... :)
 
Thank you,
I appreciate all the help,
these answers of yours have clearly explained everything I was asking.

awesome
 
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