Video shooting and colour issues

Previously we discussed the problems of the changing
colour of daylight and how this effects your shooting
and white balance settings on your camera.

This time I would like to deal with the subject of mixed
lighting on location.

Let’s say for a moment I am a news cameraman (my
old profession) shooting some stories or interviews on
location I someone’s house.

It’s around 11.30 in the morning and direct sunlight is
coming in through he windows. I position the person
we are interviewing so that the sunlight hits one side
of her face.

From my camera position the sunlight comes from about
90 degrees to the right of where my camera is. Now this
means that the other side of the subject is quite dark as
no sunlight is hitting this side of the face. There are a
couple of things I can do to reduce then contrast between
both sides of the face.

One thing I can do is position a large piece of white board
to the left side of the subject’s face so that it bounces the
sun light back into her face and brings up the brightness
of the dark side.

If I had some portable lights with me I could put the light on
this dark side of the face and bring up the brightness that way.
The only problem is that the portable light has a colour
temperature of around 3200 degrees Kelvin which is much
warmer than our daylight. This would mean that the colour
would look different on this side of her face.

The colour of the light from the window would be around 5800
Kelvin quite blue looking.

What I could do is put a (full blue gel) over my light that would
change the colour to match the blueish daylight on the other
side of her face. This gel made by companies such as Rosco or
Lee is called a CTB gel or (colour temperature blue.) The gel
corrects the warm light from our portable light and makes it the
same as the sunlight. At this point I could white balance my
camera which would see all the light as daylight.

Drop me a line if I can be of further help.

Cheers, Barry