Shooting concert

[Patrik Vale]

I will be shooting an upcoming concert with EX1 and EX3 cameras. The "problem" is that there will be those lights with color gels so the colors of the stage will change..
How do I make a white balance in this situation? Is it possible to make it once and have it all the time without changing, or do I need to WB every time the color change?

Thanks for help

[John Peterson]

Originally Posted by Patrik Vale

I will be shooting an upcoming concert with EX1 and EX3 cameras. The "problem" is that there will be those lights with color gels so the colors of the stage will change..
How do I make a white balance in this situation? Is it possible to make it once and have it all the time without changing, or do I need to WB every time the color change?

Thanks for help

Leave it at 3200K (Tungsten setting). I like Oliver Neubert's Picture Profile for stage shooting:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdc...ecipes-34.html

Post #506

John

John

[Les Wilson]

I know what u mean. Don't fall to the temptation to use auto white balance. Theatrical lighting throws awb off. In particular pink and yellow lights. As advised above, use the preset position and set it to 3200k. This will give u good skin tones when they use the "white" lights and you will capture the true theatrical effect of the colored lights as intended by the director and technical arts team.

At a school where I am volunteer technical director, we have a standing policy of NOT using pink lights at events with lots of camera toting parental units. If you know the folks involved, u might suggest it. ,

[Vincent Oliver]

Interesting you mention pink lights, any reason behind this?

I just shot a wedding in Switzerland and the reception was all lit with pink lights and the result was awful. I have never come accross these lights before.

[Paul R Johnson]

Pink isn't a problem, Magenta is - which most people call pink when they see it. Red, Blue, Green, Magenta, Yellow and Cyan - the primary and secondary colours of light.

Any of these colours really mess up auto white balance because the cameras have RGB sensors, so light in these primary and secondary colours have one or two of the colour set totally missing - and the camera is looking for small differences in the RGB to indicate which tint needs adjusting. White balance is designed to cope with a bit blue or a bit red - not no blue or no red - It either won't set, or worse - sets very badly. 3200 as mentioned is normally fine - unless the lighting is predominantly from discharge sources (like moving lights with very blue output. 5600 or higher might be better if these are in use. If you have some discharge lighting, then any tungsten sources are going to look very 'nicotine' colour!

[Les Wilson]

Disney, I'm told, uses pink and "transparent blue" all over. It makes skin tones look great to the eye but is not so friendly to the camera AWB. Our venue was notorious for bad pictures. When I took down all the pink/magenta gels, it changed dramatically (no pun intended). Bottom line is pink/magenta gels make skin tones orange on camera. Below is an example of Pink/magenta) on a photo taken with AWB.

Here is an example of Yellow gels on a photo taken with AWB: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/attachme...itebalance.jpg

[Vincent Oliver]

Thank you Paul and Les, for your detailed explantion, I have now cancelled my opticians appointment.

At the time of shooting the wedding I thought my camera was playing up as my eyes were colour correcting the scene, yet the preview was showing a hefty pink cast. I did try to white balance this at the time but skin tones went out of the window, I shot the whole lot with the cast and have manged to correct it to some degree in the timeline. Its not objectionable, but I would have preffered a cleaner shot.

The other point I had to bear in mind is that the couple had chosen this "pink/magenta" lighting, so colour correcting it out would be limpossing my opinion or thoughts on how the scene should look.

btw. I shot this all on my Canon XHa1, just because it was all needed in SD and I wanted to move about quickly and I didn't want the IR problem to rear its head. although I do have the Tiffen filter for the EX3. I think this may be the last time that the XHa1 sees the light of day, I did miss the functionality of the EX3.

[Walter Brokx]

To anwser shortly on the original question:
it would be strange to white balance for every color: do you want the show to look like it was lit with 'daylight' only?
The lights are meant to have color, so it's ok when people turn blue, red, green or pink because the light makes them look that way. People accept it when they see the footage, because most people know theatrical lighting is based on the use of different colors.
Like said before: stick to 1 colortemperature.

Good luck with shooting the show!

[Les Wilson]

I don't think I said or implied white balancing for every color. I know for fact if you run with AWB, your skin tones will be horrible under pink/magenta lights that are sometimes used instead of whites and look great to the eye.

To solve this, you need to set a custom white balance. This helps the camera capture the dramatic lighting as it was meant and as I explained in my first post. If you know for fact that they use pink/magenta instead of white, and they are willing to let you white balance under them, then your skin will look fine even though they are under pink/magenta. I know this to be true because I've done the test shots and we've run the lights before shows so that people can set their WB if they want all to rave reviews. If you set your WB to 3200K, skin under the pink/magenta lights will be ummmm pinkish which is way better than martian orange. YMMV

[Walter Brokx]

@ Les,

I was referring to the original question: "Do I have to change WB everytime colors change?"
(Otherwise I would use an @ or a quote)

Actually, I was also advising to use 1 colortemperature for the WB and leave it that way.
The only difference between our anwsers is: you replied on a technical level explaining about temperatures and skintones and I replied on a more 'simple' level. (Simple as in: the colors change and that's part of the show. If you want to capture the experience of the show: accept the changing colors and don't change WB in between.)