Shooting color print film indoors, or available light?

[stradibarrius]

Can color print film be shot indoors using available light with out having the yellow/red cast. I have used it to take product shots with 3200k hot lights and it always has that yellow/red cast. I know this is a light temp issue but how do people use film for available light shots. With digital it is easy to adjust W/B but I know it can be done successfully with film.

 

[E. von Hoegh]

Use the appropriate filter. Try googling "filters tungsten light". Like this - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output....,cf.osb&fp=a3ac719cefece25a&biw=1280&bih=907

 

[holmburgers]

Yes, it can most certainly be used indoors.

You need an 80A filter.

I personally think that all 400 speed films should be tungsten balanced. Chances are they'll be used indoors, and if not, you can probably afford the less than a stop of correction necessitated by an 85A filter when outdoors.

c'est la vie

 

[Ian Grant]

Most modern C41 colour films are designed to work well in most types of lighting and need no correction filters. Any correction is done in the printing stage.

Ian

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I haven't shot it in a while, but does Kodak make VPL anymore? But it's a tungsten color neg film.

 

[Athiril]

I use 400 speed films outdoors mostly. Since I don't have f/2.8 lenses on my RB67

When I use films indoors, I typically use ceiling bounce flash.

 

[F/1.4]

Yes, it can most certainly be used indoors.

You need an 80A filter.

I personally think that all 400 speed films should be tungsten balanced. Chances are they'll be used indoors, and if not, you can probably afford the less than a stop of correction necessitated by an 85A filter when outdoors.

c'est la vie

Absolutely not, most wedding shooters who shoot film either use 400H or Portra 400, and look how much stuff we do outside! Portra 400 and 400H are easy to color balance in scanning and take it reasonably well. When you're inside, thats when you shoot your Tri-X or Delta 3200. I just ditch color altogether if it's not outside or can't get away with 1/60th.

 

[holmburgers]

Let me rephrase that... they should make a 400 speed tungsten film.

 

[Leigh B]

If your light source is tungsten (= halogen) you can get by using correction filters with the appropriate speed adjustment. Results should be fine.

If there is any fluorescent light, you have a different problem, and really need a modern color temperature meter.

Color temperature (3200K or 5500K or whatever) is based on the ratio of red to blue components of the "white" light.
It knows absolutely nothing about green.

But fluorescent light can have very significant output in the green band, much more than predicted by the standard spectral curve that CT expects.
Modern CT meters get around this problem by including a separate sensor for green, and calculating the error as a green/magenta correction.

The required correction is usually a magenta gel over the light source, or (less desirable) a magenta filter on the lens.

- Leigh

 

[hrst]

Remember that current color negative films have huge overexposure latitude and straight linear curves after the toe region. And, remember that the box speed does not include much underexposure latitude.

What a color temperature filter such as 80A or 80B does is, it just removes two stops of red, yellow and some green from the picture, letting all blue go through.

Now, what happens with 80A filter, is that you either measure through the filter and end up increasing exposure, or you measure without a filter and apply a filter factor of 2 stops. So, you "overexpose" two stops to get blue in right place on the curve (away from toe), and the filter removes excess red, yellow and some green so that they are in balance.

Now, if you didn't use any filter, and shot a ISO 400 film at ISO 400, you end up having blue record at "ISO 1600" and red record at ISO 400. It is hard to color correct.

Let's get back to the overexposure latitude; if you just applied a filter factor of two stops, WITHOUT using a 80A filter, you would have blue record at "400 ISO" and red record at "ISO 100". And as we know, color neg film overexposed two stops still gives perfectly linear response.

This leads us to a good rule of thumb:

If in wrong color temperature, OVEREXPOSE by the filter factor for the filter for that particular conversion, even without the filter. This allows you to do proper color balancing in post processing. The film is linear so you can do it in analog printing by just dialing in more yellow and magenta.

Without overexposure, the blue record is on the toe of the film, so you lose the linearity, making the color correction in post very difficult.

If you happen to own the filter, nothing wrong in using it. With slide film, it's compulsory if you want anything but orange.

Now, with today's very good films that have some underexposure latitude, too, you may be okay by overexposing only one stop...

 

[LunoLuno]

I had thought the same way as hrst wrote when I first read OP's post, but when I found the following sentence, I thought this could be a much more simple matter. The OP said,

"... it always has that yellow/red cast"

Maybe he should ask the printer to correct color temperature of his prints first?

 

[holmburgers]

This leads us to a good rule of thumb:

If in wrong color temperature, OVEREXPOSE by the filter factor for the filter for that particular conversion, even without the filter....

Brilliant, and makes a lot of sense.

 

[Chan Tran]

I have hope that they continue to make film so I am not hoping for them to make reintroduce tungsten film. Like others have said, you should use a filter to correct for the color balance when you shoot daylight film under tungsten lighting. I have shot many types of color negative film without filter and trying to correct that during the printing phase. The result would look better but never good enough because one of the layer is underexposed severely to do correction in printing.

 

[hrst]

If you really want to shoot indoors at good photographic speed and quality, the way to go is to buy tungsten-balanced MOVIE film stock such as Kodak Vision3 500T which uses the same technology as the new Portra 400, has great underexposure latitude, but is a bit faster and, being tungsten-balanced, is more than 2 stops faster in tungsten lightning than Portra 400. The only downside is that you cannot process them in normal C-41 process.

I think there now is a company selling and processing 135-36 lengths of those movie films; Dead Link Removed .

 

[film_man]

I particularly like Portra 800 with mixed lighting.