Daylight or tungsten balanced?

[Jeff Troiano]

I started typing this question, and I started going into a big long exposé about what I know and don't know. But all that really was meaning less.

What I'd like to ask, if I'm starting out building a basic lighting kit, for narrative film making, should I start out getting tungsten or daylight balanced lighting? I know one can't really build an all encompassing kit, and having both will be essential. I'm just wondering Which direction would you start at?

Thanks for your replies,
Jeff

 

[Gonzo_Entertainment]

Well... Tungsten is WAY cheaper. You can get a whole Tungsten kit for what a single HMI costs.

 

[Phil_UK]

Depends what you do more? Shoot indoors and need to match up lights? Tungsten. You can give them CTB gel and make them daylight!

 

[Gonzo_Entertainment]

Unless the vast majority of your shooting is outdoors in the daytime, HMIs are rental territory IMO.

 

[2001 Productions]

If you can afford them, go HMI all the way! It's much preferable to gel an HMI with CTO if you need to match tungsten than it is to gel tungsten with CTB. CTO cuts light output by roughly 20%, CTB is more like 70%. Plus, daylight is typically much brighter than indoor lighting.

You could also look into Kinos, which can be lamped to either temperature.

But, like Gonzo says, HMIs are friggin' expensive - so are Kinos. Unless money is no object, I predict you'll wind up with tungsten balanced lights.

You could always rent...

 

[Gonzo_Entertainment]

"You could always rent..."

Yep.
I've built a "basic" tungsten kit (2 X 200 and a 1K, still looking for a 650 at the right price) and then anything else I need I rent.

 

[Zensteve]

If you're getting those CFL softbox types of lighting, it only costs a few bux to pick up a whole set of different colour-temp bulbs to swap out when you need to.

 

[jax_rox]

You can give them CTB gel and make them daylight!

And lose 75% of your light output? This is why I rent HMIs for outdoor situations as much as possible, they're much more efficient, but also more expensive hence why they get rented. I've used multiple 1k and 2k fresnels with CTB over them in the past (when budgets didn't allow for rental of multiple 1.2k-1.8k HMIs) and it pains me that they're hogging up all that power, and I'm only getting the equivalent light output of a 250w, and 500w HMI respectively.

That said, whenever I have complete control, I prefer to light faces with tungsten lights as I believe they look nicer on a face. I also like to stay away from LEDs because they have strange colour shifts. Even fluros like Kinos have weird colour shifts that I don't particularly like - I generally get production to front up for the expensive colour matched Kino-branded bulbs if we're shooting with Kino's.. They're much more colour correct than the much cheaper Osrams most rental companies put in them