Sodium Vapour Lights

D

DDirector

Veteran
We're shooting in a underground garage.
The lights are all orange sodium vapour lights.

I wanted to know if it would be best to balance the light using gels in front of an 1.2K HMI to match the lights, or if renting a light that is the colour of a sodium vapour would be better and cheaper.
I personally have never seen these lights used before.

Would I have problems with this light shooting on the Red One - Non MX?
 
couldn't tell you which light would be better, but you may need to shoot 1/60 shutter. do a test shot at your normal speed and play it back in double speed to make sure theres no slow scan line. the refresh rate of soduim vapor can be tricky
 
This is something you're probably gonna need to test before hand. Different sodium vapor lamps can look totally different depending on age and type (high or low pressure). However, as far as I know, tungsten with some sort of yellow / orange gel combo is traditionally used when replicating this type of light. With HMIs, you'll first have to correct them to tungsten balance, voiding some of the gains in efficiency that you get, thus rendering the extra money spent for renting them somewhat of a waste.
 
Moseph said:
This is something you're probably gonna need to test before hand. Different sodium vapor lamps can look totally different depending on age and type (high or low pressure). However, as far as I know, tungsten with some sort of yellow / orange gel combo is traditionally used when replicating this type of light. With HMIs, you'll first have to correct them to tungsten balance, voiding some of the gains in efficiency that you get, thus rendering the extra money spent for renting them somewhat of a waste.
Click to expand...
We already have HMI on the list for rental, so might as well use them!
 
Test prior ..absolutely.

I would be turning them off...unless you wanted the weirdness and the grief.
 
If you don't have much control over the location, try flagging the lights that spill on to talent while keeping the ones behind as-is for a bold, colored rim. Just did a shot like that this week:







If you set your white balance a little cooler than usual and use tungsten keys, skin tones will push a little more orange and should give the impression that your talent is lit with sodium vapor lamps (as long as you keep that spill in the background). Those frame grabs were at balanced to 4000 with a tungsten china ball for the C/U, 2.5k HMI camera left of the wide, and a small LED panel moved around for a rim.
 
stefancolson said:
If you don't have much control over the location, try flagging the lights that spill on to talent while keeping the ones behind as-is for a bold, colored rim. Just did a shot like that this week:







If you set your white balance a little cooler than usual and use tungsten keys, skin tones will push a little more orange and should give the impression that your talent is lit with sodium vapor lamps (as long as you keep that spill in the background). Those frame grabs were at balanced to 4000 with a tungsten china ball for the C/U, 2.5k HMI camera left of the wide, and a small LED panel moved around for a rim.
Click to expand...

Nicely done
 
If you decide to use HMI and want to match sodium vapour lights, try straw 013 possibly with some 1/4 or 1/2 CTO can work well. Rosco actually makes cinegel 3152 "Urban Vapor Gel" to simulate sodium vapour lights.

As for shooting them with RED or any camera you should test it in advance, anything is possible. I just finished a series of night shooting directly under sodium vapour lights and had no issues with 24fps @ 180 degree shutter as far as flicker, etc on regular speed playback but on double speed play back there are some signs of a scan line.
 
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