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problems when using LED stage lights
I have been having problems when using LED lights on our theater stage using Live IMAG video.
The colors on the cyc when we use LED’s are different in our viewfinders. Blue LED’s, come up as Purple, which is the worst, but we have other colors that are off as well.We are using Sony XDCAM EX-3 with Canon and Fujinon B4 ENG lenses.
Color correction filters seem like the obvious guess, but the concern would be how would they effect anything else that is Blue, like a performers dress, etc?
Anyone have an answers?
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5 Replies
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It’s the overly saturated blue. Or other color, for that matter. LED instruments are not continuous-spectrum, and while eyes see one thing, cameras see another.
If you look at it on a vectorscope you’ll see the blue spiking, even to the point where the trace is outside the circle. (Illegal color.)
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Hi Curt,
To add to Alan’s point about LED issues, I’ll talk about your color issues, blue looking purple. There’s is no simple answer.
You will likely have to look into matrix settings. Here’s video that should give you a headstart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gerb8QjfeA
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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Silly question, but are there conventional fixtures being used for stage wash? Are the cameras being white balanced on fixtures which have a different color temperature that the LED fixtures?
Tech-T Productions
http://www.tech-t.com -
In theory, you would try not to mix lights that are hitting talent. You can either do Source 4, or you go with an LED wash.
Vince Becquiot
San Francisco Bay Area
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Whenever a lighting designer for stage productions asks me, I always give them this same answer:
- Do NOT mix LED and Tungsten lights for front lighting on performers. We’ve seen countless times where conventional cans are used for front lighting, but then they’ll use LED up-lights on the downstage lip of the stage (blue/black, reds) — whenever a performer gets on top of them the cameras ONLY see that color on them, which is extremely intense — all other colors get washed out and it makes exposing for the performance extremely challenging.
- LEDs are *great* for accent, hair-lights, cyc lighting, side-lighting, etc. When there’s a choice, use tungsten-style lighting for frontal lighting, not LEDs
- If you must use LEDs for all your lighting, then use them for all of your lighting ☺ We do shoot one venue which recently put in all LED lights, but still has non-LED spots. We white balance our cameras for Tungsten but set them closer to 3400 than 3200 if we want things to look a bit more natural.
Regarding the blue as purple — my gear is a mix of Canon, Sony, JVC and GoPro — we can white-balance all to the identical temperature, but they’ll see blues/purples differently.. same thing goes for red/pink. I think we finally got them to match most of the time now by mucking with the different color-space profiles in-camera.. very VERY glad we took the time to do that.
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