White balance before or after CTB?

D

dhoydysh

Member
So, if I've got a few tungsten Arri lights for my shot. When I add the CTB's, it cuts down the light supply.

I've been told to white balance to the lights, and then add gels? Is that correct? White balance, then add gels? Or do you white balance once everything is added, including the gels.

Also, is there any way to add CTB filters to a soft box? Can you put the gels inside the softbox?

Thanks
Damon
 
Re: White balance before or after CTB?

For correction gels, you're gonna want to white balance AFTER adding the gels (it'll look really blue if you add CTB after the WB). For party color gels where you want to use a color for effect, add the gels after the white balance.

I've added correction gels to the front diffusion material of the softbox several times.
 
Re: White balance before or after CTB?

And you can clip the gels outside the softbox, much easier. It makes some noise though. The really cool thing you could do is buy a diffusion cloth for your chimera that already color correct the temperature, that's the fancy way to do it. But a large sheet of CTB works just fine.

The question about CTB is quite simple: White balancing makes things white. Do you want to add CTB to make your lights blue? Then you white balance first. Do you want the CTB to make your lights white? Then after.
 
Re: White balance before or after CTB?

You white balance to whatever you want to have look white. If you're adding blue gels to your lights because you want the lights to look blue, then obviously you'd want to white balance beforehand. If you're adding blue gels to your lights because you're shooting in daylight, and you need to convert the tungsten lights to match daylight, then obviously you'd need to white balance *after* adding the gels.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top