Daylight or tungsten balanced?

[Harry Lime]

Let's say it's Christmas in June.

If you had a choice between a tungsten or daylight balanced Rosco Litepad, which one would you choose and why?


thanks

[Brad Webb]

daylight. you can always slap some CTO on it and it won't lose too much light output. But if you put CTB on it you lose almost all the light output.

[Martin Stevens]

Daylight..........because the light loss penalty is a lot less if you need to filter it to 3200K.

[Gunleik Groven]

Daylight, but make sure it is as "full spectrum" light as you can get...

[Mark Britton]

I prefer daylight. I primarily use small LEDs in night car interiors, night exterior closeups. Interiors, as eyelights, some fill or accent lighting. So most uses are 'daylight' color temp for me.

The conventional lose more light gelling a tungsten to daylight than gelling a daylight to tungsten isn't necessarily a given for LEDs...it depends on the original spectral output of the LED as Mr. Groven alludes to by mentioning "full spectrum".

LEDs from different manufacturers are all over the place in their spectral output, they may achieve "daylight" by having big spikes in blue and green, and have minimal output in red wavelengths...so gelling a 'daylight' LED to tungsten is something that would best be tested on skintones before you get in a situation where you're under pressure.

[Harry Lime]

Thanks everyone.

I want to get a small 3x6 or 6x6 Rosco LitePad to use as a camera mounted Obie light.

[Erik Bien]

I'd go for two of the daylight 3x6s with all the trimmings: eggcrates, AC & cig lighter adapters, y-splitters, dimmers.

[Aria Khosravi]

I wrestled with this decision extensively over the last two weeks, almost nonstop. Definitely go with daylight. Only disadvantages are price if you need fresnels / hard light to go with it, and the fact that most practicals and existing light you run into will be tungsten balanced. However, as others have said, gelling daylight to tungsten only results in a small bit of light loss, whereas gelling tungsten to daylight is almost pointless in most cases because of how much light you lose. And keep in mind that you only need 3/4 CTO to convert 5500K to 3200K. Full CTO will convert to 2900K. Maybe that last point was supposed to be obvious, but I somehow didn't figure this out until the other day.
Personally, I'll sometimes balance to daylight but leave tungsten practicals or actual lights in the frame with no correction. There are occasions when the warm orange glow can actually turn out as a nice stylistic choice.

All of that being said, you said you were using this as an on-camera light. If you're doing event coverage or other "reality" type stuff with the Litepad as your only artificial light source, the tungsten might be a better fit. If you're doing anything else, then disregard this and go with what I said in the first paragraph.

[Harry Lime]

All of that being said, you said you were using this as an on-camera light. If you're doing event coverage or other "reality" type stuff with the Litepad as your only artificial light source, the tungsten might be a better fit. If you're doing anything else, then disregard this and go with what I said in the first paragraph.

I'm going to use it as a camera mounted Obie (Eye catch light).

The nice thing about the Rosco Litepads is that they falloff pretty quickly. If they are dialed down you should really only pick up their reflection in the actors eyes. I really do not intend to use them as a light source to illuminate the subject.

The problem of course are the spectral issues with the LED. I'm hoping that those problems will get drowned out by the rest of the lights in the scene which may be tungsten or HMI. I'm just hoping I won't end up with pink reflections or something weird looking.



Thank you for the advice. I'm going to go with a daylight panel.