Tungsten lights + Blue Gels = Bad?

D

DDirector

Veteran
Im getting some tungsten lights, but I do quite a bit of work outdoors or indoors where there is natural light. I know that you can put a blue gel over the light to balance the color.
But, I also heard it ruins the effect. I dont know what exactly, but something about the light is not as great as without the gels. Maybe the quality, or the color in the end?

What exactly are the pros and cons of using the gels on the lights to get 5500K from a 3200K light?
 
It's really not as simple as throwing on a blue gel and calling it matched color temp. There are different grade CTB. like a 1/4, 1/2, full. You see. the outside color temp changes throughout the day. So 5,500 kelvin temp, is more than likely around the brightest part of the day, and thats usually between 11:00am-2:00pm, then it gradually changes. I have found when shooting in daylight, it's easier to use reflectors to bounce the light where you need it. Because your bouncing the same kelvin temp light. You can buy a sheet of silver sided foan insulation at home depot for about ten bucks. There's a lot you can do with it. You can paint one side white, or black to use as a flag or bounce. You can get it shiny or dull, which determines the throw and brightness. It's fun to experiment with it.

To get back to your original question, yeah, when you gel a light, your losing light. So you need to figure how many stops your gonna lose by the grade of the CTB. Depending on whether it's a half, or full . My advice is to get a light meter and experiment. Although the grade will determine the light loss.

I shot a scene in a laundromat at night. it had ugly floures. lights. WE had halogen, a couple 2k's-650's and 1k. We had a really hard time finding a decent look for our white balance. After some experimenting, we found it looked great with using a 1/2 green, and a purple gel over that. So it shows that sometimes experimenting can sometimes be better than going with the traditional true and tried methods. Anyways, I hpe I was able to help a little.
 
Cons - You lose a lot of light from the blue gel. Full daylight blue is full stops, so the output of a 1K drops to about 250w. I have found that you can get away with 1/2 or even 1/4 blue if the interior daylight is indirect. White-balance to the gelled light rather than the window. I've come to really like daylight blue compact florescent bulbs for interior day. If the window light is doing its job and the background looks nice. A little 23w or 2 can fill in the actors face nicely on a small set-up. For bigger shots you can rig up 4' tubes in a shop light for a cheap kino.

Pros- tungsten is still the best bang for the buck for a pro looking light kit. Its what you want for night interiors, for matching practicals and with gels you can get close commercial florescent. The warmer light tends to be nice on flesh tones. Even on a day interior if you are away from the windows or close down the curtains, you can often go full tungsten no problem. Balance for your lights and let the background go where it will.

Another option is to include a roll of tungsten orange gel in your kit for controlling windows. Go for a stop or 2 of ND to keep the windows from blowing out then light your scene. May not be practical to do a large glass wall commercial space, but a typical house is do-able.

For exteriors your not going to compete with the sun with small lights except for maybe magic hour. You're better with silks and shiny boards.
 
dop16mm said:
cons - you lose a lot of light from the blue gel. Full daylight blue is full stops, so the output of a 1k drops to about 250w
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what!?! If that is really how much it drops, then that sucks BIG time!

Makes me not want to use these now as I know I will be using mostly with daylight white-balance setting. Like 85%+ of my stuff has natural lighting in the scene. HMI's and Kino Flo's are not an option. Just too expensive.

dop16mm said:
Another option is to include a roll of tungsten orange gel in your kit for controlling windows. Go for a stop or 2 of ND to keep the windows from blowing out then light your scene. May not be practical to do a large glass wall commercial space, but a typical house is do-able.
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So your saying that if I find a large Orange gel and put it up on my windows, I can use that to change the color temperature? It does sound like a great idea, but it also sounds like a lot of hassle. Plus, will that even look good in the end? - Honestly, I dont really want to bother with it.
 
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DDirector said:
So your saying that if I find a large Orange gel and put it up on my windows, I can use that to change the color temperature? It does sound like a great idea, but it also sounds like a lot of hassle. Plus, will that even look good in the end? - Honestly, I dont really want to bother with it.
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I gel windows all the time. You have to do it right so there are no unnatural reflections, but it works if you just have a smallish tungsten kit. You can spend just $100ish dollars and stand a fighting chance.
 
Even all the lights I have in my house, except for one lamp are daylight temperatures. Not tungsten yellowish color. I just hate that colour period. I forced them to change the bulbs. Tungsten yellow is annoying. lol

Id much rather have daylight color-balance and if ever needed, put an orange gel for Tungsten.
 
Honestly, I dont really want to bother with it.
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Then stop making movies! This all takes a lot of work and it's expensive. It will look good if you do it right, but in the end you'll find yourself shelling money out all the time for full CTO and if the house has a lot of windows it does take a while. I've spent many countless hours putting ND and CTO on windows and sure it sucks, but it's always well worth the effort.

Here are your options.
1. Cheap CFL softboxes or just CFL's in china balls. They're daylight balanced which is great, but the CRI is not always the best, nor is the color temperature. They're not precise instruments and they fall apart quickly. Not meant to handle real production. You also can't dim these and you can't just pop a scrim in it.

2. BCA's - Daylight balanced photofloods. They last for about 2 hours or so of constant use? But they're daylight balanced and not CFL's. They're also pricier than you want them to be..I'm not quite sure but I really like these.

3. Kino flo's - Work great, easy to use, but as you've said, pricey. Same with HMI's.

4. Tungsten lights with full blue - Lots of light loss, makes your set hot, never looks right, but it's cheap.

5. Diachroic filters - Basically lights with full blue tinted onto the glass. This might actually be a pretty good option for you. Maybe look into diacrhoic par 64's. They still suck up a good amount of light, but they don't fade over time and par cans/globes aren't that expensive. They also have ones that slip in front of the light, but I don't see those very often.

6. Gelling windows - Time consuming, usually looks pretty good, but probably will get expensive in the long run. One roll of gel is over $100 and depending on the windows you put them on, could last forever, or a week. Maybe just plan your shoot around the size of the windows and shoot in places where the windows get gradually smaller. :)

7. Bouncing light - Time consuming, as the sun always moves. Does usually look good, but it gets frustrating. Hard to keep a consistent look over time. If it's overcast or patchy clouds, you're also sort of screwed.

That's pretty much it. Lighting is expensive, it sucks, but it makes you more resourceful in the end.
 
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DDirector said:
Even all the lights I have in my house, except for one lamp are daylight temperatures. Not tungsten yellowish color. I just hate that colour period. I forced them to change the bulbs. Tungsten yellow is annoying. lol

Id much rather have daylight color-balance and if ever needed, put an orange gel for Tungsten.
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Then why are you buying tungstens to begin with? If you can't afford to buy HMIs, rent some.

I agree with Ryan; proper images take work, patience, and money, and if you don't want to "bother" with doing what you need to do to get it right, then you might rethink whether or not it's really what you want to do.
 
David Jimerson said:
Then why are you buying tungstens to begin with? If you can't afford to buy HMIs, rent some.

I agree with Ryan; proper images take work, patience, and money, and if you don't want to "bother" with doing what you need to do to get it right, then you might rethink whether or not it's really what you want to do.
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Exactly!! Movie making is diffficult business, but when it's done right it's the most rewarding in opinion. I prefer the halogen look over the daylight. But thats just me. I find it warmer and easier to work with( color temp wise) But you lose a lot of energy in heat. It seems since you prefer the daylight rated, you would be better off selling your tungston lights and get what you like. ( do you have decent tungston kit, if so, and you want to sell, send me a pm)
 
6. Gelling windows - Time consuming, usually looks pretty good, but probably will get expensive in the long run. One roll of gel is over $100 and depending on the windows you put them on, could last forever, or a week. Maybe just plan your shoot around the size of the windows and shoot in places where the windows get gradually smaller.
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It's not hard to untape the gel and roll it up. I have the same gels for years at a time. And I only cut um down only if I have to. Your right about being a goode alternative. But if your shooting in a house that has only a few windows then it will only take a few minutes to retape them up, and pull them down.
 
photonashville said:
FYI, using a lightmeter (one of those dinosaur pieces of equipment) a Full CTB is -1.5 stops.
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How dare you actually measure something?

Okay, but you did good. Rosco rates full CTB as losing 1.6 stops, I'm pretty sure.

How often do you use your meter with a video camera? Do you use if for lighting ratios? What do you use it for? Sorry for the thread hijack. Just curious.
 
Yeah, I understand. I should just give it a try and gel up the windows. Does anyone have a direct link as to where to get these gels?

If I could, I would rent them, but I dont make enough money out of this stuff, sometimes its just experimental stuff to gain experience and I dont make any money off of it. So, renting would really set me back a lot.

What happens if there are fluorescent lights in the room? I had something planned to shoot in a hospital. How will I be able to color balance it? - I am not sure if I will have enough lights to properly light to the room with the lights off. But, just in case if I cant, how would I go abouts doing this?
 
I don't know if gels can be rented. They are an expendable and while available when renting lights may not be by themselves, since they may get cut or such.

Filmtools.com sells any gels you want in sheets and rolls. B&H sells gels but some sheets are only sold in batches of 5.

Slondon - Ha, good comment. I am a photographer of 12+ years. Been doing video work for several years. The lightmeter rarely is ever used for any work since digital stills and video shows me the exposure I want. It's a lonely piece of gear these days.
 
Sometimes when the budget is tight/small, and I need a daylight or cooler color temp. I find myself going for the 1and 2 light 650 watt mole fays with a piece of opal gel. They're cheap and you can swap out the bulbs. Some people call them the poor man's HMI!
 
DDirector said:
Yeah, I understand. I should just give it a try and gel up the windows. Does anyone have a direct link as to where to get these gels?

If I could, I would rent them, but I dont make enough money out of this stuff, sometimes its just experimental stuff to gain experience and I dont make any money off of it. So, renting would really set me back a lot.

What happens if there are fluorescent lights in the room? I had something planned to shoot in a hospital. How will I be able to color balance it? - I am not sure if I will have enough lights to properly light to the room with the lights off. But, just in case if I cant, how would I go abouts doing this?
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It depends. Do you see windows in the shot? If the flouros are daylight balanced then you're pretty good to go, just add more daylight balanced lights to light your scene. But if you see daylight, and the flouros, and they're a strange color temperature, then you have you either turn off the overheads and go all daylight, or switch out all the bulbs up top to a daylight balanced light, or gel them all to daylight.

If you don't see daylight, and all you see is overheads, then what you can do is again, gel all the overheads to tungsten and light the rest with your tungsten lights. Or you can gel your tungsten lights to match the overheads. If you had kino flo's you could just pop out your kino tubes and replace them with some of the overhead fluorescent tubes and then white balance out the color shift.

If you're looking for gels, I can sell you a good little bundle to get you started for pretty cheap.
 
RyanT said:
If you had kino flo's you could just pop out your kino tubes and replace them with some of the overhead fluorescent tubes and then white balance out the color shift.
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This is a great trick and I do it a lot. Just ask for the maintenance guy who changes the flos, he'll have a box of them you can use. Even those little skinny babies fit the Kino sockets fine. Even when you can't white balance for clean whites you still preserve the actual look of the place, which is often what you want anyway.
 
the GE flos you can get at HD or Lowes are pretty decent for getting a color temp and fairly OK CRI. They come in 2700, 3200, 4100, 5500 and 6500.. For like 5$ a pair.. Just buy a case in the color of your choice and match your interior to daylight or tungsten since a case is like 35$. Cheaper to make the room like the sun than make the sun like the room I suppose.

Also, why balance everything to one temp? Sometimes having multiple color temps can add layers and presence to a room that would otherwise be fairly dull. Remember, if it looks good, it IS good.
 
Well, I got a good deal on a Arri Kit, so I just went with it and bought it.
I guess I'll be needing a whole bunch of filters with it for various lighting conditions.
It was fairly cheap as a package, that I might even be better off selling it agan and making a little profit to buy Kino's. But, for now, I will play with these when they arrive.
 
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