Illuminations: Color Temperature Strategies (page 2)

When you arrive at a lighting location -- or better yet, when you scout it prior to shooting -- you can start down a color temperature decision tree. First, do you or don't you want to use the ambient light?

If you don't, your decision's made. Turn off the room lights, curtain the window (or mask its light with mover's pads held up with century stands) and start lighting.

If you do want to use ambient light, the next decision is how to handle it: use it, filter it, or change it. With daylight, your options are to use it or filter it. If you use it, you'll want to filter other sources (available lighting and/or video lights) to match.

If you filter it, you'll need to frame off the window, because window sheet filters look obvious unless they're rigged outside -- a complicated job and nearly impossible if you're above the ground floor. As long as the window stays out of frame, you can use its light, filtered through an 85 gel.

If your big light source is overhead fluorescents, run a manual camcorder white balance set and then check the image on the monitor. If the result is still greenish or chalky, consider abandoning the ceiling grid, replacing its tubes, or gelling it.

Often, you'll find that the ceiling grid and the window light are close enough in color temperature to yield pleasing images. In that case, go with your fluorescent video lights, or use blue gels on your halogens.

Whichever way you decide to go, the key to a professional look is color temperature that's reasonably consistent throughout the shot, whether the light is from windows, fluorescents, or halogens. For warm, cool or neutral lighting setups, when you know the tricks, you can color the world.

Contributing Editor Jim Stinson is the author of the book Video Communication and Production.

Today, you can buy fluorescent tubes in any hardware store that mimic outdoor light with tremendous accuracy. You can identify them by consulting the laminated tube guide usually provided at the tube display.

Medium screw base curly lamps are widely available too, but their color temperature is highly problematical -- ranging from shop light-marginal through barfo green.

However, there is a source of 5000K screw-base lamps suitable for video work. Check out The Equipment Emporium (www.equipmentemporium.com) and look at their "Fluoro Lites". These lamps burn 26 watts and put out the equivalent of 125 incandescent watts of light. That's great for replacing practicals, but skimpy for movie lighting; so they sell a scoop-type instrument that takes three lamps. Add a little diffusion and you've got a 78-watt soft light that puts out 375 watts of light.

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