F3: Shooting with tungsten whenever I can

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pchristoph

Well-known member
tungsten dairybarn.jpg
Screengrab from a small shoot in an old dairy barn this past Monday - used an Arri 2k into a 12x12 beadboard, two 1k tungstens for background. And a 750w for some hair light. I'm using a custom color matrix in camera and a lut worked up in Lutcalc app. Bit of grain added for vintage feel.
 

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I went back to using tungsten whenever I can several years ago on my sit-downs/features. In fact, I just added more tungsten fixtures at the end of last year/beginning of this year. It just renders skin tones so beautifully. There are only two full spectrum light sources: the sun and tungsten. Not LED's, not HMI's, not Flo's...

I was just on a three cam shoot two weeks ago with my 55 for a big three letter net and we had a gaffer and truck to handle all the lighting. Every single fixture was tungsten.
 
Daylight has its obvious uses, but for great looking skin tones, Tungsten just makes skin sing beautifully. The other thing with daylight is it looks quite different depending on high CRI, lower CRI, LED, fluorescent, HMI, CTB gel, etc... With Tungsten, the light source looks so much more consistent no matter type of fixture its in.
 
Run&Gun said:
I went back to using tungsten whenever I can several years ago on my sit-downs/features. In fact, I just added more tungsten fixtures at the end of last year/beginning of this year. It just renders skin tones so beautifully. There are only two full spectrum light sources: the sun and tungsten. Not LED's, not HMI's, not Flo's...

I was just on a three cam shoot two weeks ago with my 55 for a big three letter net and we had a gaffer and truck to handle all the lighting. Every single fixture was tungsten.
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+1 on tungsten

My T-kit:

Lowel tota x2 ( 300w,500w,750w bulbs as needed )

ARRI 650w fresnel

ARRI 300w fresnel

ARRI 150w fresnel x 2

and the crucial element- a huge 36x48" Chimera for the tota. With fabric grid.

Lowel totas are super cheap and you can pick up the bulbs at any hardware superstore. The big Chimera with a tungsten source inside produces a soft wrap like no Diva can. Throw in a 4x4 beadboard bounce...magic.
 
Only trouble I found shooting in CA, is alot of "green" buildings wont allow tungsten incandescent lights.. its some sort of state law.. thats going to ban incandescent bulbs altogether by 2018.. but quite a few buildings will not let film crews use Tungsten film lights now..
 
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I love the look of tungsten. Skin certainly looks better under tungsten light, but I'm slowly replacing all my tungsten fixtures with energy efficient alternatives. Every industry needs to do their bit to lower their carbon footprint, including ours.
 
Now here is a thing. When my F3 booted up it used to initially be tungsten balanced before any settings kicked in. I wonder if the chip is native tungsten hence good results.

I do use tungsten where appropriate. typically blacked out spaces or ones with minimal windows that can be CTO'd.

The fixtures are so cheap and varied.
 
Liam Hall said:
I love the look of tungsten. Skin certainly looks better under tungsten light, but I'm slowly replacing all my tungsten fixtures with energy efficient alternatives. Every industry needs to do their bit to lower their carbon footprint, including ours.
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I have some of the new ish Astra Lite Panels .. I have the older ones too.. but the Astra is alot better.. as long as you can bang them though a diff frame.. the tungsten is not bad at all.. more pricey but for studio or rental the Arri Skypanels are very good in any color temp.. they are all improving very quickly.. but cheap LED,s are just always going to be degrees of crap..

AFAIK all the commonly used CMOS sensor camera,s are daylight native.. not that that makes any difference in the real world
 
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Tungsten for corporate shoots it's pointless for me due to typically huge windows and daylight temp flouros everywhere. The quality of alternative lighting types improves at an incredibly rapid rate, in fact, it's one of the fastest developing sectors and provided one keeps an eye on Alan Roberts tests you can be fairly confident in the lighting quality. (YMMV clause.)
 
I love me a bit of tungsten, especially when mixed with other things. Since day 1 of Digital cinema camera ownership people have gone on about daylight balanced sources being the key to clean images, but who wants clean?

Redhead 650w with diff used as ambient fill against Dedo DLEDS in a variety of colour temps

FS7 Screengrab 3 by Ben Scott, on Flickr

2 x Arri 800s - one diffused and the other kept hard

Nadine Shah - To Be a Young Man by Ben Scott, on Flickr

Same, plus a tungsten practical giving a bit of separation from the background.

Nadine Shah - To Be a Young Man by Ben Scott, on Flickr

Rigged tungsten practicals on a dimmer circuit for extra warmth against 2 x 1.2k HMIs (one through each window) - I think these are all still some variant of ungraded Redlog but you get the idea.

The Beast of Rainham Marsh by Ben Scott, on Flickr

The Beast of Rainham Marsh film shoot - Red R3D stills by Ben Scott, on Flickr

Used as a key for the close ups

The Beast of Rainham Marsh film shoot - Red R3D stills by Ben Scott, on Flickr

The Beast of Rainham Marsh film shoot - Red R3D stills by Ben Scott, on Flickr
 
pchristoph said:
Screengrab from a small shoot in an old dairy barn this past Monday - used an Arri 2k into a 12x12 beadboard, two 1k tungstens for background. And a 750w for some hair light. I'm using a custom color matrix in camera and a lut worked up in Lutcalc app.
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Forgot to say, this is gorgeous.
 
I have to say, since finding Plasma lights, my love of tungsten has dissipated.

I still use tungsten on smaller jobs or for interviews where I'm shooting compressed codecs and low dynamic range scenes where white balance isn't gonna amplify the blue channel into a noisey place.. But I'm often gelling tungsten to 1/2 CTB of full CTB and capturing at 5500k white balance...specially for high dynamic range scenes captured in compressed codec where amplifying the blue channel in-camera (WB) may push the blues into noise. This also slightly affects the greens. Tungsten is great on skintones because it is full of the warm tones our skins are rich with. So when lighting I often have light on talent slightly warmer and background light slightly cooler. This is not a rule, just an effect that makes the talent beautiful and adds a sense of depth to the scene.

I must admit, I have never shot on the F3. And I'll agree that the image the OP posted is definitely a great image.

One question about gels. A CTB is not adding blue wavelengths to the spectrum of light reaching the subject, but instead, blocking more of the red/orange/yellows from passing through the gel so that in comparison, the spectrum of light that eventually hits the subject past the gel seems more balanced. Is this correct? Or am I wrong about this and the CTB gels are actually somehow adding more blue frequencies to the overall spectrum hitting the subject?

The reason why I ask is because tungsten emits so little blue wavelengths that it makes it hard for daylight balanced digital sensors to capture clean signals in the blue wavelengths. Specially since blue wavelengths are much faster and shorter than red wavelengths, so they don't penetrate the photosites of the digital sensor as easily. So if CTB gelling tungsten is just blocking warm tones and not adding blues, then I am more interested in finding ways to introduce more of the blue spectrum the sensor is so often starved of with tungsten...whence my shift towards plasma. And I'm not a "clean-freak" by any means. I shoot vintage glass, pro-mist and digital diffusion filters, selectively add grain in post, anything I can do to infuse images with the appropriate character. But even though I would shoot everything on vintage Speed Panchros if I could, I still find myself often needing to watch for noise in certain channels.

I'll still use tungsten and am not knocking any of the great things said about tungsten on this thread. Just speaking from my own personal preferences and opinions that I am slowly moving away from tungsten in the digital age. When shooting 16mm film, which I still am asked to do from time to time, I tungsten the crap out of those sets. A T stock of film handles tungsten beautifully. However, digital I am finding to be a different beast. Again, your mileage may vary.
 
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Nirv said:
Tungsten for corporate shoots it's pointless for me due to typically huge windows and daylight temp flouros everywhere. The quality of alternative lighting types improves at an incredibly rapid rate, in fact, it's one of the fastest developing sectors and provided one keeps an eye on Alan Roberts tests you can be fairly confident in the lighting quality. (YMMV clause.)
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I get what you are saying, Nirv. It is more practical to have a kit of LED / HMI / Kino's for balancing with daylight and 5600k existing lighting. I'm still working on putting such a kit together.

But there are times where I still go tungsten on corporate work. I shut off the overheads and allow any windows in the background to go blue. I always have my tungsten ARRI kit in my vehicle, even if I only bring LED and Flo's into the building for the shoot. I'm not ready to go sans tungsten fresnels just yet. I did that on a recent shoot and felt partially naked on the drive to the location.

I'm still trying to come up with an LED source that can be put inside a big chimera light bank. I'm leaning towards the Fiilex M1. It has female receptors for the soft bank built into the light. The little dinky soft boxes that strap onto a LitePanel don't cut it for me. And I need more output than the 1x1 LED's provide for when I want to use a bounced key light.
 
This is what I'm still looking for - for my kit too. A bit o punch from an LED fresnel type fixture... that 120 is a candidate - but I think I'm waiting on the daylight version - since I'd rather gel CTO and loose output than vice versa
 
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