LED theatre lanterns

The current shift from conventional tungsten lighting to LED lighting in theatres is causing me a lot of problems. About 30% of my work is shot in theatres.

The spectrum from this new form of lighting is so narrow that if the lighting designer decides to have a state that is all blue or all red or something there is a disastrous loss of resolution due to the nature of camera sensors.

There is also the problem that white LEDS are a very different colour temperature to 'white' tungsten.

Cabstar, are you experiencing this too?

what is needed is flash or video light options that allow you to set the color temp in camera... it really would NOT break the bank to have a camera take a manual whitie balance then send the info to the flash and have the flash set its color output to balance...
Now find somebody that wants to invest in manufacturing it.

Don, I dont think this is where the problem lies, the light is so 'one colour', let's say red that only the red photosites see it and therefore nuch reduced resolution. I'll post some examples later.

Yeah, sounds plausible. Might be worth investigating whether a Sigma camera with a Foveon sensor mitigates the problem (not a very cheap solution!)

I suppose the best bet might be to try and negotiate with lighting techies to get 'flatter' light for your shoots? I'm presuming working in theatres you aren't usually working during actual performances?

I understand. I spent a lot of time with trial and error to get cfl's with a wider color gamut...
I just thought if the existing light is no good, you need to add your own... and it would be nice if there was an easy to balance portable solution..
other than getting in there and swapping bulbs before a shoot, there is probably little you can do but use strobes or video lights...

Yes I am working during performances or at dress rehearsals, so changing the existing states isn't an option. Interesting thought about different sensors.

Shoot film and scan?

You're right of course! I dont think I could face the scanning

I've done a couple of small music gigs lately and have really struggled at times with loss of detail, oversaturation and clipping channels. Never even thought about LED lighting being the issue...

Example:

[IMG]http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r35/digitalCG/sfc02_900.jpg[/IMG]

There's almost no detail in the skin and those blue lights on the background sign look hideous. The same happened with night shots of some coloured fountains on my last holiday - again especially in the blue channel - all the while I've been blaming cerveza as I know the K5 is up to the job

Thanks for giving me some food for thought (and a slim hope I'm not completely rubbish!)

Interesting....

Of course, LED lighting is very narrow spectrum. Even white is either three narrow band colours (and your eyes see as white, but dSLR may not), or they use LED to excite phosphor to create white.

Some seriously challenging LED lighting examples here.

B&W might be your friend in these cases

Matt

Just some update information on this topic...

Wikipedia "Color rendering index" (see the last subheading "Film and video high-CRI LED lighting incompatibility")...

...which references "Solid State Lighting Project"
(Check out the videos with the make-up and props - links are on the bottom right. All the solid state lights looked the same to the human eye, but not to the camera - there are all kinds of weird colour shifts due to metamerism! Yikes!)

(you can find some of this information by Googling the term Metamerism)

Some bed-time reading!
Matt

Hi Ken


Somehow I misses thus thread. The only solution I have found is to use a small amount of fill flash. This seems to lighten up the subject just enough. But thus is also brings the problem of harsh colour edges. If you look at my photos of the ting tings I recently posted you will see the results. These lights are causing issues for all brands of camera and a lot of music togs are not shooting bands now who use them...

Unfortunately the situation is going to get worse they use so little power so more and more theatres venues and festivals are going to use them...

as you can see in this shot three LED light rigs, the stage was blasting with them, I will try & find an image without flash to show you the difference, so yeah definitely switch the flash on..

I'm so glad you spotted the thread, you know exactly where I'm coming from.

The job that gave me so much grief was a dress rehearsal so a touch of flash would not have been objected to; what kind of flash settings were you using in general?

The settings where crazy

ISO 1600
Shutter 1/180
F?5.6
And flash manual set to 1/128

Like I said crazy settings anything less than f/5.6 just resulted in everything being blown out...