Shooting under mercury vapour lights?

[Shootar401]

I have a photoshoot coming up this weekend, a last minute shoot filling in for someone who decided to cancel at the last minute.

Normally thats not an issue, but turns out I will be shooting a sports game that is held indoors in a small local arena. I'm going to have to set up some strobes on the rafters to get a good shutter speed, but I'm not sure what color temp mercury vapors run at. Anybody know? The only gels I have for my lights are the Plus Greens, are these close enough? If not what would I need.

Thanks!

 

[vpwphoto]

Merc vapor are very hard to filter for. The specta is very "spikey".
The are very blue green... overpower them with strobes.
I won't guess at a gel color as I have not had much success, they are the same animal as sodium vapor with is yellow orange.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

If you can get away with it, shoot color neg film, ideally something like Portra 800. This is of course where the-format-who-shall-not-be-named shines, as you can custom color-balance to your light source before you shoot. That would be my very first choice, but if you're going the more traditional route, your options are Portra 800 or Fuji Superia 800. I've not shot with the fast Fuji, but I have shot Portra 160 at night with highly mixed lighting (combination of sodium vapor, fluorescent, halogen/tungsten and neon in the same scene) and been able to produce accurately color-balanced prints.

 

[Shootar401]

Thanks!

Any power cycles that I should match my shutter speed to? I would really like to try and go in there with my ENG camera before the shoot and see what it white balances at, and go from there. But it likely wont happen.

The photos will ultimately end up on the web, so I suppose I could do some selective colour correcting down the road. Just trying to get it right in camera.

 

[Mike Wilde]

Wangle a couple of speedotron 2400 packs and four 102 heads with 11" reflectors, and maybe a couple of 20' head extension cables. Oh, a wireless trigger, or maybe a whole whack of zip line and plenty of chain or aircraf6t cable for rigging safety mounts.

Get there early or the day before so you can get the aiming right with the modelling lights, if you can.

You mention ENG experience, so I presume you are hip to feathering one light into another to minimize hot spots.

 

[achromat]

Start by testing with 30-40 Magenta and when your happy, use filtering (oppsite of the magenta)over your strobes. Rosco has some fixed filtering in gel sheets.

 

[Leigh B]

Will they let you use strobes at all?

- Leigh