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Tungsten or Daylight. Which light is the best.

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Alexey Datsenko

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Tungsten or Daylight. Which light is the best.
What light do you use?
Maybe is it good to use only daylight?
Why we need tungsten light at all?
 
If you're looking for the technical answer for a particular sensor you'll want to get closest to the native color balance of the sensor. For Mysterium-X that is 5000 kelvin. Which would "technically mean" to produce the cleanest image possible you'd want something around there. That's fairly close to most daylight balanced lights and also why some folks use filtration to compensate for tungsten.

That's the technical answer. But here's what I feel the real answer is.

In my short career as image maker if you don't experiment, utilize, and explore other types of lighting you are only doing yourself a disservice. There are cinematographers on this forum who have been shooting twice as long as I have and those are lessons I learned from folks cut from a similar amount of experience. Not to mention studying features and other images I've enjoyed over the years.

The real answer is there is no best light. The best light is the light you choose to tell your story with. It's how you use that light that makes all the difference.
 
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Ok experiments it is good but...we get the white faces and white environment with daylight and yellow faces and yellow environment with tungsten
I think we don't need a years of experiments to understand what faces we need yellow or white.

Of course we don't need yellow faces outdoors we will use daylight.
Yes we probably need yellow faces indoors but actually we also can get white faces indoors and it even maybe have better looking.
So tungsten and yellow faces we can use only indoors but we also can use daylight with white faces indoors too.
So why we need to use tungsten indoors if we can use daylight indoor? (except situations when you need people at the table in the evening)
 
Alexey Datsenko said:
Ok experiment it is good but...we get the white faces and white environment with daylight and yellow faces and yellow environment with tungsten
I think we don't need a years of experiments to understand what faces we need yellow or white.
Click to expand...

Actually, you will need a lifetime of years to learn how to paint with light. It is not as simple as what faces are white or yellow. It's the nuances that make up the entire scene.


Alexey Datsenko said:
Of course we don't need yellow faces outdoors we will use daylight.
Click to expand...

Depends - heavily overcast day you may want to mix something warmer in there so the talent does not look pale. You can correct a daylight source - or add a splash of tungsten.

Time of day makes a difference too - taking advantage of the shifts in color temp throughout the daylight / magic hour can deliver beautiful images. Using the wrong fixture can kill the baseline nature provides us with. Goes for both daylight and tungsten - it's a dance.


Alexey Datsenko said:
So tungsten and yellow faces we can use only indoors but we also can use daylight with white faces indoors too.
So why we need to use tungsten indoors if we can use daylight indoor? (except situations when you need people at the table in the evening)
Click to expand...

That's what you spend a lifetime learning. Most often, it's a mix. The daylight coming in must look natural - so should what is perceived as the internal sources whether a practical or bounced.
How will you factor in the ambient light? The practicals? Where do you place your fixtures and how do you control them?
Sometimes, creating negative space is more important than what you add.

Bottom line, there is no one fixture. It's knowing how to use all of the tools at your disposal to create the image you envision.


Note: Not mentioned in your query is whether flicker is a consideration. Are you shooting anything off speed?
 
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Ok, I would like don't talk about paint with light because it is a very long discussion.
I want to ask Why I need tungsten fixtures?
For Example if I have Arri 1200 I always can add CTO filter and get from 5600 4700 or 4000 or 3200K (even with Transmission around 50%)
For examples if I have 2-3 Arri 1200 I always will have daylight 5600 and when I need I will get 3200k or 4000K for around 600-700 watt if it is needed. But I think it will be very rarely when I really will need tungsten 3200 I even don't know in what cases. Can you give example please? When I need tungsten Arri T2 or T5 and I can't resolve it with Arri 1200?
 
tungsten is cheap compared to electronic lighting...to buy or rent.
 
Tungsten also produces a lovely "full spectrum" light for that matter.

Several daylight sources are the same way.

Also, remember when you add color correction filtration such as a CTO or CTB to a light there is light loss. Which becomes rather important in a few situations.

It's not a matter of "what you need", it's a matter of what you want. The only thing that is true is if you want to see it you'll need light.

There are many ways, styles, and techniques to explore with light. Some primarily focus on getting beautiful balanced sources to reveal a lovely skintone for instance. Others however may want to craft a story and make the viewer feel like they are in the same world their characters are, and that rarely means one color of light used throughout a project.

Interestingly enough this also effects grading in post and what you can do with material. A balanced same temperature source actually produces a pretty nice digital negative to tackle in post and you get rather clear separation on your tonality, but not much flavor in say your fill light. Using a variety of lighting temperatures and even playing with ambient sources provides a good amount of variety that's a totally different feel in camera and in post for that matter.
 
As Phil says, Tungsten is a full smooth spectrum light, so could be argued renders fleshtones (and everything else) more naturally than most daylight sources.

However, if you only have the budget for either daylight OR tungsten, then I'd go with daylight. But be careful with cheap LED or fluorescent daylight sources - they can have non-continuous spectrums with greenish/magenta spikes which may cause weird colour shifts especially in fleshtones. Some of these shifts are difficult or impossible to correct in post.
 
WHat kind of shooting do you plan on doing? Being a bit more specific here could help to reach a better kind of response.

The way you've phrased the question, there is no right answer. Which is better? Blondes or Brunettes?
 
While this might be touching a slightly different topic, I personally believe mixed lighting makes from some great imagery.


And to answer Jason Comparetto....Blondes are clearly the better ones ;)
 
Jason Comparetto said:
WHat kind of shooting do you plan on doing? Being a bit more specific here could help to reach a better kind of response.

The way you've phrased the question, there is no right answer. Which is better? Blondes or Brunettes?
Click to expand...


The same goes for the lenses.
Why we (the big guys)have to spend a $100+K on the nice(preferable) lenses, when we can get the picture from a $100 lens.
 
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