White Balance Warm/Tungsten

[BlacksheepPictures]

How would you set your White Balance in camera for a Scene like in 1917 in the Tunnel or the warm scene in James Bond on the Couch?

I thought about settings the light to 3200K and the camera to 4800

Or what would you use? thank you

Topic

[simon m]

Oh thanks Roger so much. I’ll have a look for it.
I found the Texaco station a few years ago, with the ‘coin flip’ scene. Just a bit of fun.

Enjoy your weekend!

[Roger Deakins]

For the tunnel in 1917, the camera was set at 3200K and the LED in the flashlight was around 2800K. The lights were warmer in M’s apartment.

 

[dmullenasc]

BlacksheepPictures wrote:

How would you set your White Balance in camera for a Scene like in 1917 in the Tunnel or the warm scene in James Bond on the Couch? I thought about settings the light to 3200K and the camera to 4800 Or what would you use? thank you

You’re thinking in terms like every light in your scene is a programmable LED that can be set to whatever color temperature you like, which is often not the case, your movie LED lights are mixed with other sources in the room that have their own color temperature, or the LED bulb itself has only one color temperature.  Sure, in an abstract setting lit by one bicolor LED, all you have to do is make sure the camera is at a higher color temperature setting than the light is set at to make it render as warm. But that’s not often the case in real-world situations lit with multiple types of lights.

For example, a household tungsten light bulb is more like 2700K-2800K so would render slightly warm on a camera set to 3200K, and even warmer if the bulbs are dimmed down.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by dmullenasc.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by dmullenasc.

[LucaM]

dmullenasc wrote:

…If the camera had been set to 3200K, then the lighting would read slightly warm. If one wanted even more warmth, one could set the camera higher like to 3400K or 3600K, etc.

I’ve got a “philosophical” question: does altering a bit the temperature of lights with the WB of the camera may still be considered a way to obtain “in camera” the desired look?

For the little project i’m working on i’m trying my best to obtain “in camera” the effect i’m looking for (and i think using this approach is a nice way to learn), but after many tests with colored lights and gels the only simple way i found to obtain the “day for night” effect i desire  is cheating with the WB of the camera. Not the best solution, i know, but the only one that seems to be working in my case.  I’m happy with the result and it just requires a little grading in post to achieve the exact look, but it made me wonder on what  “in camera” means, in practical terms.

[Roger Deakins]

If you were shooting on film you might use a tungsten balanced stock to achieve a dusky blue. What is the difference in altering the camera setting? Why is that cheating? Sounds like a good solution to me.

 

 

[dmullenasc]

As Roger says, it is not “cheating” to create a color by the color temperature setting any more than doing it with tungsten vs. daylight-balanced stocks. Keep in mind that the “native” color temperature of a sensor is probably close to daylight (i.e. there is less noise in the blue channel at 5600K compared to setting the camera to 3200K.)  Does that mean you are cheating when shooting the camera at 3200K?

And even if you shoot film, a daylight-balanced stock just means that the yellow dye layer (blue information) is slower in speed compared to in a tungsten-balanced stock where it is faster to compensate for a reduction of blue wavelengths in tungsten lighting.

Also remember that if you record raw, then color temperature is just metadata and is only applied during the debayering step to RGB color.

[LucaM]

Thanks Roger and David! You helped me put things in the right perspective. Mine it’s the usual beginner mindset (“this thing makes the job easier , so it must be some kind of cheating, the masters will cover me in pitch and feathers and send me away as an heretic because i took the easiest road..” Well, i think you got the idea). We live in an era in which AI is ruining changing everything and i’m here wondering if it’s right or not to use white balance as a way to obtain the right mood instead of colored lights and colored gels for a micro production like mine…

[dmullenasc]

The main difference between doing it with color temperature camera settings versus gels on lights is that when you do it to the camera setting, it’s an overall shift — with gels on lights, or dimmers on tungsten lights, you can just warm up the lights you want to look warm. (Of course, you could do it by changing the color temperature setting on the camera except now you’d have to add blue gel to the lights you wanted to look less warm… it all depends on which approach is the most practical.)

[Author]

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