Advice on lighting set up in kitchen for video with 5D3

[cayenne]

Hi all,

I'd posted some of this in passing while discussing other stuff on another thread, but figured this might warrant its own post here.

I'm trying to shoot video, a self done (one man band) cooking show with my 5D3.

I'm trying to learn lighting...and I'd bought myself some clamp lights to try to do a little DIY style. I'd gotten CFLs all at a 5000K temperature.

I've had a heck of a time getting white balance set.

I've had a bit of luck using one of those insta-disks..that you put over the lens, snap an image and use that to set the 18% grey and do custom color balance. That seems to really help!! I've had more success in some test footage I shot recently, while also using the marvels picture style, and actually slightly underexposing.

Doing all that, I actually seemed to do better on in camera white balance, and left myself some good range for after shoot color correction and grading.

That being said....

I figure if I could light the kitchen with its native lights at the same temperature as my clamp lights (on stands, AC vents, you name it, I clamp to it)....I'd have a WHOLE lot less variation and ease in PP.

Again, right now, my clamp lights, all are currently CFL bulbs 5000K.

I've started researching, my regular lights are track lighting, and use U10 halogens which appear to be about 2700K. This is a rental house, so I gotta work with what I have.

I've been looking around for what will fit in a U10 socket...and choices are limited. I can't seem to find any halogens that are higher than about 3000-3200K. I found some LED ones that go near 5000K, but man, those things are like $20-$25 each...and I'd need about 11 of them?!?

Now, I'd gone into this, assuming it would be best to try to light the whole thing in the daylight, sunlight temperature range....am I wrong there? Does it matter, as long as everything is the same temp?

Should I look into getting softer CFL light bulbs for my clamp on lights?

Is there an easy way to shoot with mixed color temp lights and I need to know the trick?

Thanks in advance!!!

cayenne

 

[Dantana]

The closer you can get all of your lights to one color temp, the easier it will be to correct. You can only set your white balance to one value in camera, so if you have two very different temps of lights in a scene, it's going to be noticeable and hard to correct.

You could try getting warmer cfls, or gels for the cfls to make them warmer to match the practicals in the scene.

You could try going the other way, but you lose less light making a cold lamp warm than a warm lamp cool, if that makes sense.

 

[cayenne]

The closer you can get all of your lights to one color temp, the easier it will be to correct. You can only set your white balance to one value in camera, so if you have two very different temps of lights in a scene, it's going to be noticeable and hard to correct.

You could try getting warmer cfls, or gels for the cfls to make them warmer to match the practicals in the scene.

You could try going the other way, but you lose less light making a cold lamp warm than a warm lamp cool, if that makes sense.

Hmm..so, I guess my old assumptions that different color temp lights all blending together to make a single temp doesn't hold water, eh?


Interesting on the losing light less with warmer lights thing...thanks for that!! Ok, I'll look to go cooler on the CFL clamp lights. I can save those bulbs for adding light to say my patio shots that are shadowed, but in daylight outside the patio roof...

Ok...so, looks like the halogens for the track lighting will stay, and I'll get warmer CFLs for my more portable clamp lights.

Any other suggestions out there?

C

 

[Dantana]

No, color temps don't blend.

To clarify what I meant about losing more or less light: A blue gel that corrects a reddish light to match with daylight (ctb) will eat a lot more of the source's light than a salmon gel to correct a daylight source to tungsten (cto).

That's not to say that all of your lights have to be exactly the same color temp. Say you had your main lights at 3200k and white balanced for them. Then, let's say your practical lights in the kitchen are more like 2900k. If the 3200k lights are what is really illuminating your scene, mist things should look proper, and your practical lights would have a slightly reddish hue in the shot.

 

[JasonATL]

I used a lot of CFL's in my light kit. I love them because of how cool (meaning, not hot) they are. I even bought several boxes at different color temps to help me match to the practicals when shooting in various locations. For example, my daughter's school has fluoros that are around 3500k, so I can use my 3500k's to match there. In my house, I have some household "warm" CFL's that are around 2700k and come in handy rather than trying to gel or switch out the bulbs in the practicals.

Having said that, there is cost in terms of color that you will pay when using CFLs. In my experience, that cost in terms of color rendering gets higher, the lower (warmer) the temp of the CFL due to them having a lower CRI. Most "photo" and "full spectrum" CFL's are 5000k or 5500k (or higher). So, I've now bought a set of gets, rather than having the different temp CFL's. The only high CRI CFL's that I have found in a "tungsten" temp are those by KinoFlo (at $25 per 26 watt CFL ~ 100 watt incadescent equivalent). I haven't bought them yet, but they will be the next bulbs I buy.

Since you are shooting food (I assume, since its a cooking show), I think you'll really want to capture as full a color spectrum as possible. Therefore, gelling the CFL's you have, as suggested by Dantana, is probably preferred to getting warmer CFL's that are likely to have a lower CRI. Of course, if you bought your current CFL's at home improvement store, they may or may not have a high CRI.

B&H has a lot of gels. You want to look for CTO gels. Each 12"x20" sheet cost about $6, plus shipping.

Also, a handy web reference that I have found for calculating the gels you need is this:
http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/mired-shift-calculator.html

 

[cayenne]

I used a lot of CFL's in my light kit. I love them because of how cool (meaning, not hot) they are. I even bought several boxes at different color temps to help me match to the practicals when shooting in various locations. For example, my daughter's school has fluoros that are around 3500k, so I can use my 3500k's to match there. In my house, I have some household "warm" CFL's that are around 2700k and come in handy rather than trying to gel or switch out the bulbs in the practicals.

Having said that, there is cost in terms of color that you will pay when using CFLs. In my experience, that cost in terms of color rendering gets higher, the lower (warmer) the temp of the CFL due to them having a lower CRI. Most "photo" and "full spectrum" CFL's are 5000k or 5500k (or higher). So, I've now bought a set of gets, rather than having the different temp CFL's. The only high CRI CFL's that I have found in a "tungsten" temp are those by KinoFlo (at $25 per 26 watt CFL ~ 100 watt incadescent equivalent). I haven't bought them yet, but they will be the next bulbs I buy.

Since you are shooting food (I assume, since its a cooking show), I think you'll really want to capture as full a color spectrum as possible. Therefore, gelling the CFL's you have, as suggested by Dantana, is probably preferred to getting warmer CFL's that are likely to have a lower CRI. Of course, if you bought your current CFL's at home improvement store, they may or may not have a high CRI.

B&H has a lot of gels. You want to look for CTO gels. Each 12"x20" sheet cost about $6, plus shipping.

Also, a handy web reference that I have found for calculating the gels you need is this:
http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/mired-shift-calculator.html

Hey, thank you for the great input.

Can you forgive a noob question, but what is CRI? What does it stand for and how does it affect things and how does it work with respect to color temperature?

Again, thank you for the great input, you and everyone else so far!!

C

 

[paul13walnut5]

Decide what colour is going to be easier to balance.

Probably the CFL's rather than the ambient. But at the expense of output.

So you want CTO or similar gels.

Somebody prevously gave the leelighting link.

If you go to one of their depots somebody will get you some end of roll offcuts for a few $'ss.

I'm lucky my works in the next street to the Glasgow depot. A fiver gets you sheets of stuff they usually wouldn't think twice about binning.

Rememeber the clothes pegs and gatter tapes to hold it in place.

And rememeber that a CTO halves the output, so by inverse square law of lighting, you want your lights twice as close.

Also think about windows. If they are athere shutter them. Or filter them.

I got a hard time in another thread for suggesting that white balance wasn't subjective. Anybody who has shot video seriously knows different.

 

[JasonATL]

Can you forgive a noob question, but what is CRI? What does it stand for and how does it affect things and how does it work with respect to color temperature?

Here's a link for CRI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index

My pedestrian understanding is that the CRI measures the amount of true color (or the amount of the full spectrum) that the light source will provide (setting aside white balance). The higher the number, the more true the color representation. The lower the number, the worse. My mental model for low CRI is a light in a parking garage in which everything under it only looks green or blue-green, or a street light in which everything only looks orange. The same applies to many household or office fluoros (and CFLs) that seem to muddy the colors, even to the naked eye. This was my caution against common household CFLs, especially warm ones. My experience is that they make getting appealing color out of your recordings fairly difficult, even if you have white-balanced and temperature-matched the lighting sources. My concern is especially keen here since you are shooting food, in which color perception affects people's perception of how well it is prepared or how fresh it is.

I've seen some suggest that you can get away with having the high CRI source as primary source of light, and the CRI of fill and accent lights is not as critical. I'm personally skeptical of that.

I'm with Paul. There is a science here (not that I fully understand it).

I try to follow the advice that we spend a lot of money on cameras and lenses, and we should spend what is needed in time and money on lighting to get the most out of the camera and lenses.

 

[paul13walnut5]

+1

We are capturing light.

The quality and colour of the light might need a bit of thought before we turn a frame.

I am the guy who says 'the lights all wrong'.

Usually it is. If I can get it less wrong then I'm happy.

 

[brad goda]

since you have halogens in place in the kitchen and invested in the clamp on holders... have you tried using screw in halogens? they are available 125 250 and up to 500 w at home depot.
the trick is homogeneous lighting... keeping added lights same as the practical source (kitchen) lights... color temperature and hue... thats 2700k at 2700k and +- 0 green or magenta. Use cinema grade diffusion from Gamcolor, Lee or Rosco... get their swatch books and then you can see the vast world of lighting filtration...
happy shooting