Mixed Lighting - White balance post or on location?

[Adam Rook]

I want to get everyone's take on shooting mixed lighting conditions. Do you find it easier to correct for it on location or in post?
What methods do you use for that perfect (or near perfect) white balance? Gel the lights or gel the windows? ND filters?

What's the fastest or best way you achieve a great balance?

 

[David Battistella]

It depends what you are leaning toward tungsten or daylight and your key light.

Ie: warm key with blue rims would mean a tungsten key with a daylight fill.

If you are correcting overall scenes, like with fluorescents. That is a different approach.

If you want it all the same then use or correct for the same sources. Daylight or tungsten, you need to tell the sources to match.

i guess the question is what are you trying to accomplish?

Battistella

 

[David Battistella]

What's the fastest or best way you achieve a great balance?

Use one color temperature either all daylight or all tungsten in your scene. With no mixed lighting then your scene will look completely balanced.

Battistella

 

[Adam Rook]

Thanks David for the reply. I understand that. I guess what I'm wanting to know are specifics. What equipment or techniques have you found specifically helpful in any given situation?
Would you gel a window or gel a light? Or would you just leave it alone and power window it in DaVinci?

What specific methods and equipment have you found useful in the past? Give me the scenario and explain what you did to correct it.

 

[Paul Russell]

Get into the habit of shooting a colour card, or at least a grey card for each shot. Your colour grader will thank you for it.

 

[David Battistella]

Everything depends on the look you want to attain. If I want an mixed look with a blue backlight I use a tungsten key and leave the window daylight, with the scene balanced for tungsten. You see this look a lot.

If if you don't want the window to look blue, but want something more natural looking, then you could CTO the window or you could use daylight balanced lighting in the key lights and balance the scene for 5600k which would make the window look "natural" compared to the rest of the scene.

Its probably a lot easier to gel lights than entire windows. I don't rely on resolve to handle the overall balance, you should set out with a color temperature in mind and light to that temperature knowing how daylight or tungsten fit into that scenario.




Battistella

 

[Ivan Kovax]

I want to get everyone's take on shooting mixed lighting conditions. Do you find it easier to correct for it on location or in post?
What methods do you use for that perfect (or near perfect) white balance? Gel the lights or gel the windows? ND filters?

What's the fastest or best way you achieve a great balance?

I constantly mix my lighting. Subtle gold, pinks, greens, blues.... it is a great way to create a subtle form of separation between your subject and background/foreground.

Even to emulate a simple afternoon light I will use an amber key, with a slightly more bluish fill from above (plus a few more lights depending on the actors etc).

The idea isn't to have everything lit the same colour temperature... that is boring!

the idea is to not have the difference between daylight and tungsten look too intense...

Each situation is very different, so there is no one shot solution to all scenarios!

for example, if you have an office with tungsten practicals, but the windows are daylight, I would definitely want to keep a little amber from the practicals, but the effect would be too strong. I might use some CTB on the practicals to bring their temp to around 3800-4500 or so, then use a keylight of a similar temperature on the actors face, then a backlight closer to daylight. Perhaps if the room is dark, i will splash a bit of light on a very slightly off colour temperature to make certain things pop out a little more.

 

[Jason Nolte]

I almost always gel lights, both practicals and set lights, usually starting with a half CTB and going from there. I try to achieve a neutral / balance look and then build upon that. As Ivan mentioned, you don't want too big of a difference between the daylight and tungsten unless it's motivated.

The only gel that may go up on windows is an ND to knock it down. But that's usually never quick or easy. A lot of times, if I can, I'll live a net or silk (4x4, 8x8) either behind or hidden in front of the window as a quick knock-down. And I find that it's a lot easier to start from the CTB side and work out than breaking out the CTO, imho. Tungsten lights should be tungsten, but harsh blue daylight windows (unless you're trying to mimic blue hour / early morning light) never quite look right to me.

And if I have to mix, depending on the camera, I'll shoot a middle ground temp, like 4200. A good 'run kit' includes a mix of half ctb, full ctb, some quick pop-up butterflies with net / silks and dimmers / bulbs for practicals.