i am about to purchase a lighting kit and my primary use for it will be weddings (receptions), shooting commercials (lots of inside stuff but inevitably shoot in rooms with windows) and finally product/food shots with a still photography camera.
what would be best tungsten or daylight temperture lights? i know i can gel them and etc. but just want to know if you guys were in my shoes what would you do?
-JS

Daylight balanced... EVERY time.

from my research i am assuming daylight always cuz they are brightest kind of lighrt and can always be geled to match temperature needs without compromising brightness whereas gels on a tungsten would cut down on brightness...?
still learning.
-JS

No matter what when you put a gel on you will lose light. Using CTO to match tungsten losses less than putting CTB on tungsten lights to match daylight.

I would recommend daylight balanced as an only light kit but each has it's usage.

Garrett

If you shoot an entire show in rooms with no windows, then it makes no difference whether you go daylight or tungsten. If you shoot any of your production in rooms with windows, you are going to want daylight balanced, and therefore the daylight lights have the advantage.

No to mention that our cameras are STARVED for blue light nearly all the time, and it's a primary source of noise in our footage. I want all the blue I can get in my sources.

good points guys. thanks for input.
that is what i mean, that gels on a tungsten will make the brightness suffer more than gels on a daylight 56k light...
i was starting to think tho that i could just do my best to avoid all windows like i been doing but it has really been holding me back i think.

so are tungsten lights really only good if there is NO sunlight AT ALL?
if a room is partially lit by sunlight (coming thru windo for example) thats when a quarter gel is used?
so again, the daylight 56k would be preferred choice so even with gel the light won't be diffused as much as a tungsten? am i thinking correctly here?
or would you use no gel at all and just keep it daylight temp?

thanks for your patience. i am gonna look back on this thread in a year and feel like a dumbass lol.
don't worry i am still using the "search function" like crazy...
-JS

Geling a Tungsten to Daylight or a Daylight to Tungsten loose a lot of light each way. However, I believe it's better to start out with Daylight. The reason is that when you need a Daylight balanced light you might need to fight a window for exposure. In that case you'll need as much light as possible. If all the ambient light is Tungsten the light output can be lower because you usually won't have really strong ambient light.

Lights, lenses and microphones are like golf clubs.
You get a better coverage range if you bring a full set with you.
That being said, the most economical way to build a set of lights is to do it over time, purchasing high quality used lighting instruments, and adding low cost new 55w pl Flo lights which can run daylight or studio balanced tubes.

All the Best!

all great info guys!
i am gettin my learn on like crazy. 2 days ago i new a 1/4 of what i know now.
love this board....
all of the experiences here are priceless.

yeah, i have come to realize i will be adding more and more equipment as time goes on. i have "gotten by" for too long with too little. i really wanna step it up!
-JS

I think a lot depends on the power of your available kit. If power output is limited, then I agree - go for Daylight. The trouble for me, is that if you have things like Arri or similar Fresnels, or Redheads, then Tungsten is the standard - so CTB works for me. If you have nice fluorescent kit, then the daylight tubes make sense - but then you still need CT to use them with incandescent sources.

If I only had light sources that offered lamps in both, then I'd go daylight - but I don't, so I'll stick with Tungsten, and blue them up if necessary.

Hi Jason,

One thing that I'm not clear on is what type of lighting you're going for? Are you looking for more soft lights or hard lights? If you're looking at LED or FLO's then the cost differential isn't that much of a consideration. But, if you're looking for hard lights, then you'll generally pay a lot more for daylight

I've shooting more narrative story types of projects when I need lights so I have a small kit consisting of daylight balanced Fresnels and soft boxes when I want them. I also am not opposed to mixing lights. You can get some really cool effects using a 3200K practical with daylight balanced lights.

Garrett

its a tough decision for me cuz it will be many gigs before i have enough money to spend on more lights.
i was thinking that since most of what i do is indoors i should naturally get tungsten 32k lights but windows are always inevitably near...

my original train of thought was that when shooting somewhere with daylihgt coming in, i could always use it almost as a key and would just have to use my light kit as "fill"and use reflectors so was thinking i would need less daylight 56k light.
whereas, if shooting all interior and no daylihgt coming in i would need as much light as i could get to fill the room and therefore would want a tungsten kit.... does that make sense?

how much light will i lose going from tungsten to daylight using gels? is there a standard measurement of loss? say if i was using a 500 watt flo light and geled it to daylight?

thanks a bunch everyone. i am leaning towards daylight light kit cuz i value all these responses jsut playing a bit of devils advocate to make sure i make the right decision. thanks again.
-JS

Hi Jason,

One thing that I'm not clear on is what type of lighting you're going for? Are you looking for more soft lights or hard lights? If you're looking at LED or FLO's then the cost differential isn't that much of a consideration. But, if you're looking for hard lights, then you'll generally pay a lot more for daylight

I've shooting more narrative story types of projects when I need lights so I have a small kit consisting of daylight balanced Fresnels and soft boxes when I want them. I also am not opposed to mixing lights. You can get some really cool effects using a 3200K practical with daylight balanced lights.

Garrett

i am looking mainly at LED and/Flo's cuz i like the low weight and low heat they produce. i will also use them for a little bit of still photography as well. in most of my work i think i use soft lights 8 out of 10 times. weddings, and product shots...
-JS

My rule of thumb is...

When converting tungsten to daylight you lose about a stop and a half, converting Daylight to Tungsten (depending on the unit) you lose about half a stop.

It may be a wee bit either side of this but I find that it's accurate enough for my needs.

I too would start out with daylight but, if you're using tubes, adding a set of tungsten tubes later on isn't going to break the bak.

Jason,

I'm just offering a slightly different perspective here. You've been mostly concerned with learning about color temperature. Which is certainly necessary information.

One subject, however, that has NOT been covered, is what you're going to experience with light INTENSITY in real-world field situations. (not sure why it's seldom talked about in these forums, but it's not.)

By selecting daylight (a totally defensible choice, btw) you're admitting that you're going to be working your lights IN CONJUNCTION with natrual daylight more often than not.

And that's going to present some challenges. Primarily because natural daylight is SO DARN STRONG, even when it's simply coming in through a window in an otherwise dim room. In that circumstance, it's VERY hard to overcome said exterior light with any form of affordable "kit lights." The sun is just too strong.

So putting color temperature aside for a second, your challenge will be getting ENOUGH light to bring any interior exposure up enough not to have the exterior leakage dominate things.

This is difficult on a budget. The pros will simply call for HMIs or pull some 10ks off the big grip truck. Not so easy to replicate with a beginners light kit.

So why tungsten is still used so often? Probably because a 750k fresnel with a 1/4 CTB can highlight something in a daylight infected room from a modest distance (say 10 feet) from lamp to subject. That's virtually impossible with Fluorescent fixtures - they simply do not "project" the light as well. LED (daylight balanced) is better at pure projection - but has other limitations when compared to that "old school" tungsten fresnel. (FUNCTIONAL barn doors?)

I'm not saying that daylight is the WRONG choice at all. What I'm saying is that as you're learning about this stuff, you need to realize that the AMOUNT of light your instruments generate and the ability to project that light efficiently where you want it will be as important as the color temperature of the light you're generating.

So don't get frustrated if you get your daylight fluorescents, drag them to the church, and find out that the pastor won't let you put them anywhere NEAR close enough for them to do the job of lighting the wedding party during the ceremony. They're weakness (short effective throw) makes the color temp advantage irrelevant for that particular job.

OTOH, a few good tungsten fresnels can be placed 30 feet away and STILL bring the wedding parties faces up against the church background.

Something to think about.

YMMV.

VERY good input BILL. thanks for taking time to write that up. i did consider that the "Flo" kind of lights wont project light very far and thats definitely a CON of those kind of light systems.
i think i will go with daylight temp lights cuz they dont bring down the f stop as much. i don't think there is a "perfect" choice anymore. just too many situations.... so now trying to do my best at covering the basic situations...
man, this stuff is scary. its all so expensive. will be upset if i make the wrong move. but i guess everything can be corrected with filters.....?
-JS

There is a LOT you can do with one decent HMI, one Flo, and one LED. It's a bit more pricey than the common 3-light tungsten kit, but just has so many more ways to be utilized.

Lighting is only a small part of the battle my friend. Learn your grip gear, and you'll do more with those few lights than most people can do with 10.

yeah, starting to realize that....
getting into the gear next. with proper gear seems you can make anything work BETTER.
-JS

If you're going to be gelling daylight lights with CTO, that indicates you're using HMIs, I would think. Adding CTO to fluorescent or LED lights is going to give you not much more than a nice soft glow, of very little use more than 5 feet away from the subject.

I use daylight LEDs (three Flolight.com 500LEDs and am getting another 1000LED soon) for interviews and generally closeup work. For bigger things I have to rent HMIs or go with gelled tungsten to mix with my LEDs. Adding a sheet of full CTB to a 750 watt open face tungsten light drops it down to about the same output as a 500LED (a little more, actually), but it has a lot more throw, and you can spot and flood it.

If I could only have one set of lights it would be a set of four Lowel Quartz D lights. You can get a kit with four lights, barn doors, stands and they all fit in a nice case with room in the lid for gels and a couple of flags, which you'll need.. Use diffusion gel for people shots, use them bare for big long throws, gel them with CTB for mixing with daylight, carry a variety of lamps--1K, 500 watt and 750 watt. The downside is that you'll be lucky to get a couple of 500 watts on one circuit without blowing it.

There's no one set of lights good for everything. Sometimes I need frenels, sometimes open face, sometimes a combination of everything I have and can rent. I like shooting with daylight because, as noted above, there is usually some daylight coming in and if you can't block it, use it when possible. Also, most office fluorescents seem to be in the 4500K range, a lilttle closer to daylight than tungsten. However, if you're doing much more than interviews and two-shots, you'll need to go for HMIs when talking daylight...and that's what rental houses are for because most individuals can't afford to buy them.

You can, of course, get bigger fluorescent daylight fixtures that use up to 6 or 8 lamps, usually 55 watts each. But they're big and heavy. They provide a really nice soft fill, but again, not very much throw.

i guess my final hesitation about buying DAYLIGHT over tungsten is that if you were shooting any interior and there was some light coming from a window and you used 56K lights to add to that, there would also inevitably be practical lights that have tungsten lights in them so using 56K lights would then cause mixing of light sources and bad color balance right?
so in that situation wouldnt you want to stay away from the window alltogether and just use tungsten?

thats prolly my final question about which to buy... for now lol.
plus, almost all professional equipment is tungsten (lowell, arri etc.) so still a bit curious on reasons to buy DAYLIGHT over TUNGSTEN.
-JS

i guess my final hesitation about buying DAYLIGHT over tungsten is that if you were shooting any interior and there was some light coming from a window and you used 56K lights to add to that, there would also inevitably be practical lights that have tungsten lights in them so using 56K lights would then cause mixing of light sources and bad color balance right?
so in that situation wouldnt you want to stay away from the window alltogether and just use tungsten?

thats prolly my final question about which to buy... for now lol.
plus, almost all professional equipment is tungsten (lowell, arri etc.) so still a bit curious on reasons to buy DAYLIGHT over TUNGSTEN.
-JS


I carry a range of CFL bulbs in 3 color temperatures especially to deal with what you just mentioned. $50 worth can re-bulb an entire house. Compared to the time and effort required to gel a full set of tungsten lamps, it's nothing.

Also, you're last statement is grossly incorrect. Thirty years ago there was certainly more tungsten used on set. But now, on pro sets, it's nearly all daylight. You're shopping in the bargain basement section and getting a VERY skewed view of "professional" lighting. I'd wager that ARRI produces 3x as much daylight gear as tungsten. Lowel barely qualifies in most circles as professional lighting (and I own $2k worth of their gear so I have no axe to grind there) so I wouldn't use that as a marker.

This is why you aren't seeing daylight balanced lights:

Light Sources (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?ci=1377&N=4294591579+4291609485+4291330038)

There is also the fact that people at this level of the game aren't buying "kits". They know what they need and they buy that.

i will admit i am a bit clueless but have learned a TON in these past few days. thanks a bunch everyone.
i think i have a game plan...
basically, you can never have too much light only not enough. so i will go bright as i can and get the basic key light, fill and kicker and will search for good deals on good equipment. i dont think a light "kit" would ever make me happy cuz it will always lack something i need. I was just thinking it would be a good place to start.
great info guys!
-JS

CFL - Compact Fluorescent.

Basically, the spiral shaped replacement bulbs you see in the store. Some brands of these are of excellent quality and are suitable for film/video. They generally come in 3 color temperatures: 2700, 3500, 5500. I buy a selection in each color, and and 2-3 wattage ranges.

They give off a very pleasing glow of light, and in the higher wattages can be quite bright. With minimal diffusion they can serve as lovely fill light, or used as a group in a fixture, they can simulate a window in a room.

The art of lighting is sometimes referred to as placing shadows. It would be beneficial to you to not begin your thoughts of lighting with the Key/Fill/Kicker paradigm, and instead begin to view images in the sense of where the light and shadows fall. I can barely remember the last time I did a "3-light" setup, and even the classic 3 light setup is generally at least 4 lights since the background often needs light as well.

I have an interview scheduled next Monday with a VIP. I will take a single softbox with me for that. I know the room has windows, so I will augment that with the softbox. I'll let that soft light wrap around his face somewhat, and place here close enough to the sidewall to use that as my reflector. I will set the lighting levels of the "key" so that the background falls to the level I want it to be at.

Careful control of the subject, distances of the lighting instruments, and the surroundings can allow you to accomplish more with less. If you cannot be in control of these elements, then you need to bring more tools.

Make sense?

makes ALOT of sense. thanks for the crash course. i didn't even know CFL's were available in 55k!?!
my productions are about to get soooooooo much better.
i have relied on available light for my amateur work. for my professional work i have gotten by with usually only using a couple lowell flood lights and sometimes a spot to light background objects etc.
tackling lighting is gonna be fun. its like learning video all over again and my productions are going to look FAR more high end.
thanks for your time Perrone and everyone else. i have been reading tons and tons of thread and searches and will continue to!
-JS