Balancing daylight with tungsten

karuzo

Hello all,
I am shooting a restaurant at night where 99% of existing light is tungsten. How do I balance strobes with tungsten? I assume with gels? Can anyone get into specifics?
Thanks,

Cliff Photo

karuzo wrote:

Hello all,
I am shooting a restaurant at night where 99% of existing light is tungsten. How do I balance strobes with tungsten? I assume with gels? Can anyone get into specifics?
Thanks,

Generally, you want to match the temperature of the light with your strobe, so go for a warm gel on your flash to compensate. Check out this blog, it's been a great education for me:

http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

ziggy53

karuzo wrote:

Hello all,
I am shooting a restaurant at night where 99% of existing light is tungsten. How do I balance strobes with tungsten? I assume with gels? Can anyone get into specifics?
Thanks,

Some/many restaurants use tungsten and halogen, so you may have a mix to begin with.

A modern digital camera can also be used as a color meter. Just shoot in RAW mode, sampling images close to light sources or shooting a white card, and use Raw Shooter Essentials (RSE) to tell you what the camera measured for color temperature. Look for the "As Shot" White Balance in the upper right of the screen.

Once you know the measured color temperature of the ambient light, you can measure the filtered strobes until you achieve something similar.

Good luck,

ziggy53

karuzo

Thanks everyone....

karuzo wrote:

Hello all,
I am shooting a restaurant at night where 99% of existing light is tungsten. How do I balance strobes with tungsten? I assume with gels? Can anyone get into specifics?
Thanks,

I will definitaly look into both suggestions.

TristanP

Cliff Photo wrote:

http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/

Thanks so much for that link. I've been reading it all week.

Cliff Photo

TristanP wrote:

Thanks so much for that link. I've been reading it all week.

I know, it's very addicting. Such good stuff!