From: b-roll.net FORUM

I’ve been having some problems recently - shot three interviews in the last week which have been orange. I white balanced before each interview - got the subject to hold up a white card in front of their face. All interviews were outdoors, shot with the sun behind the subject (backlight etc). My Sony 537 doesn’t give a colour temperature reading. Any suggestions would be appreciated, as the organisation I work for is severely lacking in experienced operators. I’ve been shooting for 2 years, and find I’m now the most experienced operator.
Phillip

If the sun is behind the subject (backlit) and they hold the white card up in front of their face, then you would be balancing on the "shade" side of the card. The color temp of that white balance would be up around 6.8 to 8 depending on the other conditions. Your camera is compensating for the shade (much bluer than the sunlight) rather than for the actual light. This causes your camera to turn orange. The bluer the light, the oranger the camera compensates. Using a color corrected light on the subject’s face, or a soft reflector for the sunlight would eliminate the problem. I hope that helps.
Rad

Learn from your mistakes Phillip. This "problem" that you happened on really isn’t a problem. You are now aware that if you want to warm up a sunset for instance you can white balance in the shade. This will, in effect, do the same thing you’ve been doing and give you a nice warm color temp. Not good for interviews but it does have its place.
Lutz

sometimes you have to make them squint, it makes them and you look better… unless you can get totally in the shade, then just make sure you don’t have sun spots poking all over through the trees. i am using dvc-pro and sometimes despite the white balnce and temp those things tend to go on the blue side.

eric

Try bouncing a bit of light back to your subject, using a relector board or even a bit of poly. Also take into account where it is you are doing your interview. eg. if you are doing it on a football field (backlit) the only light that is reflecting onto your subject is the green reflecting from the grass (so if you balance with the whitecard pointing slightly to the sky then you are not getting a true balance of what is lighting your subject)
Dan

From Michael Orta

Here is a shooting trick I developed using mirrors. Whenever you want the audience to feel the action coming at them (for example: a train, automobile, water, or whatever) you can purchase 5X8 mirrors and place them where the action is coming right at the mirror as you shoot in the mirror having the audience fooled as if the action is coming right at your lens. I used this trick during a train accident involving an automobile. Our station did a follow-up on railroad safety and I had the train drive right into the mirror,cool effect. You prop up the mirror with the same props you find in the back of picture frames…

I’m interested in the tricks you all use to warm up the image for interviews? I’ve tried a bastard amber gel on the 3200k light. It made the face almost too "warm" or orange. I’ve also heard about using a 1/4 CTB to white balance through. Does this work? I’ll take any tips and suggestions you have for creating a "warm and soft" image.

Dave R.

Try using a 1/2 or #1 "coral" filter or 1/2 pro warm pro-mist filter. There’s also a lighting gels called "cosmetic rouge".
Its sort of a light reddish frost or a yellowish gel called "straw".

Another method is to use dimmers. White balance with lights up full, then dim the key. The color temp. of the light will warm up as you dim the light.

A few good resources for info: Power-of-Lighting.com , Tiffen.com and Rosco.com

Drew

From: Jeff Bush Asst. Chief Photojournalist, KTNV

Make every interview look like you brought out one of the lights in your kit. Time can be a factor sometimes in our job and we need use a Frezzi instead. I’ve mounted my Frezzi on a light stand. Now, I have good lighting wherever I go. No more of that crappy, flat lighting that you can only get by mounting a light in the worst possible place, on the camera (god I hate that!). The problem is that most light stands won’t take a Frezzi. I made an adaptor out of a thick broom handle and a screw to tighten the adaptor to the stand. It took a few prototypes but I finally got it to work. Next, I hung my BP-90 from some nylon cord and wrapped a bungee cord around that. I can throw this thing around all over the place. This has proved to be one of my most important pieces of equipment.