Sodium vapour lights matched to tungsten film

[michael_taylor9]

I'm doing an interior with people where the space is lit with high

sodium vapour lights. I will use a stobe/umbrella to freeze the

people, but can't find info on gelling the strobe to match the

ambient lights, and the filter to match sodiumvapour to the tungsten

film. Help.

[brooks short]

Michael,

 

Are you shooting transparency or negative color film ?

 

A color meter would help a lot in this situation.

 

A couple of years ago I was involved in shooting available light interiors in Home Depot Stores. My job was to go into a brand new Home Depot the day before it opened for the first time. There's nothing like a brand new Home Depot with all the shelves fully stocked and the entire store clean and organized. It takes your breath away. #8^)

 

I've done stores around central and south Florida as well as Puerto Rico. By the way, the new mega-store, just outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, was predicted to do about $500K to 600K over the opening weekend. When the numbers came in that store did right at 1 million dollars over the 2 day weekend. Best selling big-ticket items were generators and water cisterns.

 

Most of the stores were lit with sodium vapor lights, though these lights are considerably cooler in color than some of the heavily orange sodium vaopr lights that you might find in a non-retail location such as a warehouse.

 

In the areas which didn't have fluorescent light, like the paint chip and design center and where there were no tungsten light ie: in the lighting section, my Minolta color meter indicated a 15-20 magenta filter would be needed for daylight balanced EPP transparency film. I thought that was a little low but decided to folow the meter's recommendation. I went with a 15 magenta filtration. We shot every display and every department in one day using a Hasselblad, 120 EPP color trans film, a color meter and 15 magenta filter in most areas. I bracketed exposure on 4 frames for each view and shot BW polaroids for client aproval.

 

Much to my surprise, the colors were very accurate. In the tungsten areas I used tungsten film. In the fluorescent areas I used daylight film with a 30 magenta filter. If your lighting is the same, and it may or may not be, I would place a 20 magenta filter on the lens and a 20 green gel on the flash and shoot daylight film, not tungsten.

 

Without a color meter, the best thing to do would be to SHOOT A FEW TESTS using available light and daylight film. Try some shots with no filter and some with a 10, 20, 30 magenta. Shoot some test shots with tungsten film also, if you thing you need tungsten.

 

Process the film, judge any filtration you might need and then re-shoot with that filtration on the camera lens, on daylight film. If those tests look good than gel your strobes with the opposite color.

 

Magenta is the opposite of green...Yellow is the opposite of blue....Red is the opposite of Cyan and vice-versa.

 

If you're shooting color negative film, the results from your lab will influence the color as much or more than any filtration at the time of the shoot but you should still test and try to find the proper filtration.

[twmeyer]

you won't get any better advice than what Brooks just gave you, no matter how hard (and long, and often) Timber tries :^). <p>I suggest color neg film, if the people are your primary subject... t

[hal_bissinger]

<i>Most of the stores were lit with sodium vapor lights, though these lights are considerably cooler in color than some of the heavily orange sodium vaopr lights that you might find in a non-retail location such as a warehouse.</i><p>

Brooks, those are Metal Halide or Metalux lamps not sodium vapor. That's the reason for the cool temperature and a spectrum that best matches daylight of any of these discharge lamps. These are a close kin to continuous studio and set lighting. With Portra or NPH/NPS you probably wouldn't need filtration at all.