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Greetings Kitty. I'll answer the second part of your question first. No, if the lights you're referring to are high intensity mercury or sodium vapor, a flourescent correction filter, like an FLD (usued for daylight films shot under flourescent light) or FLB (tungsten film under flourescent light) won't be of much help to you. Those are considered light balancing filters not color correction filters (cc's), per se. You said the lights have a pinkish cast. That indicates they're warmer lights, probably high pressure and not Deluxe White Mercury or Clear Mercury vapor lamps. So, I'll assume you'll be shooting on daylight film and I'll offer you cc's for color negative and daylight transparency films under like a General Electric Multivapor lamp or their Lucolux variety. These are ballpark corrections. If you're really looking for a pure white from these fixtures, you'll have to experiment OR you can call the street light maintenance dept and ask them what lights they're putting in lately. Sometimes it requires a call to the local utility co. street light division. So..........
DAYLIGHT NEGATIVE FILM
For multi-vapors
30 magenta + 10 yellow + 1 f-stop For GE Lucalox
70 Blue + 50 Cyan + 1 stop Transparency Film, e.g., Ektachrome Daylight balanced: Multi Vapors:
40 Magenta + 20 Yellow + 1 f-stop Lucolux:
80 Blue + 20 Cyan = 2 1/3 f-stops. Now, one of the problems with these correction filters is that if there are other colors in the scene, they'll cause a shift in them. So, whether to filter or not is, of course, a pretty subjective determination on your part. Unless you're concerned with getting some pretty scary results without filtration, I just let them go and fall where they will on the color temp. scale. Using tungsten balanced transparency stock, my preference for that is Fuji, 160 ISO, you'll get some correction built-into the film.
Otherwise, you can add the following cc:
Tungsten Film:
Lucolux lamps
50 Magenta + 20 Cyan + 1 stop GE Multi-vapor
60 Red + 20 yellow + 1 2/3 - 2 stops. As for bracketing, that won't help much with color correcting because all you'll do is darken or lighten a color shifted image. Bracketing, however is of course useful in nailing the general exposure. Remember, these are basically starting point corrections, and may not work to produce exactly what you're looking for. The only absolute way to do that is using a color temperature meter (very pricey) and having a complete set of cc filters. (For those, you may need to second mortgage your home). Depending on where you live, you might be able to rent that kind of meter and a set of cc's. I'll bet your next question is where to get inexpensive cc filters... If so, Kodak makes gel color correction filters and sells them in packets of a few each that insert into various holders that you can rig on the front of your lens. One other thing: If you're shooting color negative film and need a correction for the entire image, a good printer can pretty much find the right color pack to use to do that but it really helps to tell them either what kind of light you're trying to correct for AND even better, have a couple of frames taken with a color checker card, like the one made by Macbeth (available from camera stores like B&H. Hope I haven't confused you more than I've helped. ;>) Take it light.
Mark
December 26, 2005
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