Bluescreen with Tungsten Lighting

[Harky Jewett]

Have a shoot coming up where they will be shooting bluescreen with tungsten lighting. Recommended greenscreen, but it looks like these two variables can't be changed.

I've been told that the camera handles greenscreen with daylight best, so my question is should I recommend that they gel the lights, or use a filter? What's the best way to handle this situation?

Thanks,

Harky

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Harky,

CTB the lights. It's your best option at this point.

 

[Nils Ruinet]

I shot some tests on bluescreen with tungsten lights a week ago, and it worked much better than I would have expected.

I didn't get a chance to compare to HMI lights in the same conditions, neither to greenscreen. I guess those would have looked even better, but this already looked very good.
And it was only RC28 on build 15.
So I wouldn't be too concerned.

Nils.

 

[Shawn Booth]

I understand the concern with bluescreen and the blue channel but blue/green/red screens have their purposes.

You wouldn't use red when shooting actors (I know it's not used much anymore), green sucks when a blonde is present, etc.

 

[Manuel Wenger]

I´d be very careful with adding CTB to a Bluescreen. If you go with B16 there is a much better blue channel than in B15. I´d have confidence in shooting Bluescreen with Tungsten now wiht B16 but thats just my Opinion.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

You don't need to gel all your lights with CTB. You can use instead a 80D filter in your mattebox. A 80D will bring you half way up to approx. 4.500K which will bring down noise and broaden DR considerably. You'll loose about 1 stop. Using a 80A will convert 3200 K to 5600K but will cost you 2 stops. The 80D is a fine compromise, IMO.

And if you cannot shoot GS than please shoot at least 4K. I've seen 2K BS footage and it was really bad for keying. Build 16 won't do miracles in this regard. Again: Don't shoot 2K you will regret it.

GS, 4K, daylight: Red is in this scenario hard to beat. Did it a couple of times and find it truely amazing, nothing short to 35mm even better.

Hans

 

[Stuart4660]

Ummm ... Red's handling of blue aside - as a VFX DoP I would say, no matter what medium you shoot on I would never shoot blue screen with unfiltered tungsten. You're desaturating the blue & adding unwanted red. Use CTB as minimum. I have a couple of favoured heavier blues I use where I can. I know it's all getting easier but you should still strive for pure blue, no spill & even illumination. The post guys will love you for it.

Stuart G.
Waiting patiently for my RED letter day

 

[Esteban Sosnitsky]

I followed Gunleik's advice when shooting greenscreen last sunday.
I set the white balance to 4000K.
But I also lit the background with tungsten and I just filtered the lights that fell on the characters with 1/4 CTB. I also underexposed the background a third of a stop. In that way I managed to separate the background color in this case green from the main character skin tone. When importing in RED CINE I set the space to camera RGB and then GAMMA to RED Log. Although the image looks washed out its actually maintaining as much information as possible. Color correct afterwards.
Hope this helps.