Film set photography and setting white balance

[leejt1986]

So I go to school for film/video production and we each have to do a senior film before we graduate. I was hired this year to be the on-set photographer in 3 senior films. I really enjoy doing it but Ive had a bit of a problem. Being a film there are a lot of different temperature balanced lights. This drives me nuts trying to figure out the white balance. Generally I use Auto WB and ignore it, even then its not 100% accurate because of the mixture of lights.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to prevent a giant headache? I might be better off shooting on B&W film.

 

[Big Mike]

If they are using a consistent temperature of lights, it shouldn't be too hard. Either set a custom WB (under those lights) or shoot in RAW and set the WB afterward.

However, if they are using different lights/temps and/or trying to balance/contrast those with ambient light...then you will really have trouble. You can't set your WB to more than one settings, so if there are more than one temp of light, one of them will be 'wrong' on your photo. However, the same is true for those shooting the film, so if that's what they want to do, just go with it. If it looks terrible, you can always convert to B&W and call it artistic .

 

[leejt1986]

i think the problem i had the last time was they used a lamp as practical light and it really threw the color off.