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daylight vs. tungsten “palette”
There’s a thread elsewhere on lighting for greenscreen, where it is recommended to light the talent with 5600K, if the background is exterior daylight.
The justification was that there is a different palette — that even if you white balance, tungsten will not “read” as being daylight. That makes sense to me; I was just wondering what the lighting folks here think and practice in this situation.
— Bob C
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5 Replies
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Bob,
There are two (or more) schools of thought in this regard; if you want a “natural” color, light the foreground and the background in the same color space! If you’re looking out the window and there’s a fire truck you might want it to read the right color red, in this case you’d want to use daylight source on the interior foreground. You must also consider that there is probably a lot of daylight ambience on the interior as well, from other windows in the room.
If you were to light the interior with tungsten then the outside will look excessively blue. A compromise possibility is to use 1/2 CTB on the tungsten (or 1/4 or 1/2 CTO on HMI’s) to render the exterior only slightly blue. Some LD’s find this “mixed light” effect very colorful and pleasing.
JS
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John, did you realize I was asking about greenscreen? I think you’re agreeing, though.
— Bob C
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Bob,
I’ve lit green- and blue-screen for years, always using tungsten, and never had an issue with color temperature. As long as you light it evenly and get a good white balance, all should work just fine.
Have you had issues with this? If not, “If it ain’t broke……”
Mark
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Not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. I have shot tungsten greenscreen foregrounds and successfully married them to exterior (“keyed-in”) backgrounds.
The claim was made, on another COW forum, that if the background to be keyed in will be shot at daylight color temperature, you should shoot the foreground (greenscreen) with daylight sources.
I was just curious what this group felt about that.
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Bob,
Trust your instincts! You know that this assertion is incorrect. If anything, if the backgrounds were shot in daylight you should make the firegrounds that you shoot “look like” they were shot in daylight; meaning that the quality of the light and contrast ratios should match, for a convincing composite!
JS
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