Sodium Vapor street lights

F

frankoi

Active member
Hi everybody!
I´m shooting soon a short film with my A7sII and Inferno Shogun. Mostly at night, under sodium vapor lights. I´m very concern about skin on the actors because the strong yellow cast of the street lights. I believe that maybe my proper tungsten lights will do the trick and will put the skin tone in the right place. But I want to ask if some of you ran under the same situation before. Because one solution could be rise the blue in the white balance section of the camera but I don´t know if that is a good idea, because even the image gets prettier I´m loosing the yellow cast than otherwise is right on the street lights and I planed to use in contrast with the more white tungsten of the actors or fluorescents around the action.
What do you think? 3200k and get ride of the yellow cast on faces ( hope no to get so much thanks to tungsten ) on Resolve? or do the blue rise on camera?

Thanks in advance!
 
If you don't mind losing half a stop of light, you can use a Didymium filter (aka light pollution/red intensifier filter). It alters the WB (mainly tint) due to how it works, but significantly improves color accuracy under warm lighting once accounted for.
 
frankoi said:
Because one solution could be rise the blue in the white balance section of the camera but I don´t know if that is a good idea, because even the image gets prettier I´m loosing the yellow cast than otherwise is right on the street lights and I planed to use in contrast with the more white tungsten of the actors or fluorescents around the action.
What do you think? 3200k and get ride of the yellow cast on faces ( hope no to get so much thanks to tungsten ) on Resolve? or do the blue rise on camera?
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I would avoid those lights, it is about the worst light you can imagine, playing with the white balance will do no good as the light is for all intents and purposes monochromatic.
 
You cannot white balance or otherwise filter correct for true sodium vapor lights. These lights don't just have a yellow cast or a spike in the yellow part of the spectrum. All they put out is that limited color frequency. Raise your blues all you want, there's nothing there that's coming from the sodium vapors. Best bet is to put warm filtration on your lights to weigh them to look more like the sodium vapor lights. At least your fixtures will have other color frequencies present to make the faces more attractive.

BTW, are you sure these lights are true sodium vapor? At least in the US, most of those lights were replaced with discharge fixtures back in the 80s and 90s. Now they are moving towards LED.
 
With A7SII, even a night shoot can be arranged with a pair of 500-900 LED bead lights. Then you'd be, at worst, in a multi-temp light mix.

And, as a double check, pick up a light meter and measure the city lights where you intent to shoot. There may be a mix of all sorts of stuff out there - sodium vapor, compact fluorescent, LED (and, if you're lucky, a kerosene lamp).
 
Thanks a lot guys!!
@Cary Knoop, is not posible to avoid, because we´ll shoot in a harbor and that are all around, mixed with old green fluorescent from the ships. I need to live with it, I think the best option is do what @Mitch Gross says, warm my fixtures to get richer skin tones, because as he says no matter how much I raise my blues there is no blue spectrum in those lights....****!!
Yes! @DLD that´s why I choose A7sII :) Now I´m pretty sure that with small led lights and tungsten I can survive because I always can go to 10.000 ISO or more if i need it. I got 2,0 or less under the sodium lights at 2000 ISO , but in the ship it would be plenty of green old and dirty fluorescents that will mix my white/blue leds and my more warmer tungsten to imitate the sodium harbor lights ( yes Mitch, true yellow yellow yellow sodium...ahhhggg!! ). So go with it or die jejeje
Thanks a lot for your advice boys
 
Im not sure you need to set the camera on 10000 ISO or 3200k,

10000 ISO will just turn any practicals in shot into 'nuclear' balls of light'

I would let the lights 'sing' thier colour and go around 2000 ISO

But you need to light the talent with 'normal' light sources. aka led panels, probably diffuesed on CUs

Also I would arm yourself with a top flag of some nature so you can shade the talent from the very yellow light if you need to.
 
Yes morgan_moore, of course I only would go 10000 if I need it, I think that the regula ISO will go around 2000 and for the scenes with fluorescents probably will go at 4300k, depends which no controlled light is the stronger, for example night exterior on the ship with lot of fluorescent light around. And of course we will hace white and black panels to shape or shade as need it. we will have regular fixtures, spring balls, tungsten and several less...
I would probably let de background lights hit 80IRE and decided how much show of the background with my lights. Slog and slog3gamut.cine
Thanks!
 
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frankoi said:
Yes! @DLD that´s why I choose A7sII :) Now I´m pretty sure that with small led lights and tungsten I can survive because I always can go to 10.000 ISO or more if i need it. I got 2,0 or less under the sodium lights at 2000 ISO , but in the ship it would be plenty of green old and dirty fluorescents that will mix my white/blue leds and my more warmer tungsten to imitate the sodium harbor lights ( yes Mitch, true yellow yellow yellow sodium...ahhhggg!! ). So go with it or die jejeje
Thanks a lot for your advice boys
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This may sound counter intuitive but you need powerful lights to shoot dark scenes, because in dark scenes it is all about contrast!

If you shoot a dark scene truly in the dark the end result will look bad regardless of the sensitivity of the camera because you need light to make a scene look good!
 
nothing will be shot on truly in the dark, the dark will come later in post, we planning to shoot with contrast but in a higher key that will end low-key
 
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