bite my shiny metal ass, whitebalance!
It took me almost 30 shots (literally: 27) to get the correct whitebalance at the bar last night. Here's the sitrep:
You walk into the bar and on the left is a small wall blocking off a pool table area. So you turn right, walk the length of the bar, and come to an open area with a dance floor, restrooms on the back wall, a small elevated stage in the far right corner (against the front wall), and a back door leading to a deck area. The front wall of the bar is filled with windows and there are two windows that wrap around onto the side wall; the stage takes up the space of four windows. Each window has a neon beer sign in it, all different colored ones as beer signs are wont to be. The four beer signs in the stage area?
Yeah, they're all red ones. The stage is covered with an eerie red glow.
It gets better. There's recessed lighting in the ceiling of the entry/walkway area that leads to the stage, each with a floodlight. This would be great except the last light in the row, the only one illuminating the stage area directly, is a red bulb. Oh and there's a stage light attached to the ceiling off to one side, with a red gel on it, pointed at the stage.
The band brought their light kits, which is great for me in most cases because I'm ready for that combination, but each light bar looks like BLUE-RED-RED-MAGENTA, and with all the red going on already it was tough.
But wait, there's more!
The light bar next to the bassist blew its blue lightbulb, making that one R-R-M. I talked rather persuasively with Moose and got him to put the blue gel on one of the red lights, which helped overall heaps, but since the beer sign in the window behind the bassist was blue, and he has a green bass and was wearing a green shirt, he, unfortunately, actually
NEEDED that red light.
And because all that's not enough, the elevated stage isn't actually large enough for the whole band; only for the drummer. So they stick him on the stage, point him out from the corner, and the frontline stands on the floor, cutting off the corner into a triangle. Meaning that the final picture is:
The drummer is lit entirely with red;
The bassist is lit almost entirely with blue;
The guitarist, standing right next to the light bar, has a kind of magenta-reddish, almost normal color;
and the lead singer is lit just about normally.
I now have white cards permanently (well, with Scotch tape, but they won't get removed) afixed to the bassist's speaker cabinet and the drum set, but neither one of them helped me. I had to take my WB read off the lead singer's set list, which was sitting on the floor, and even that wasn't perfect. It just made everyone sort of uniformly, but fixably, off.
This should be fun.
You walk into the bar and on the left is a small wall blocking off a pool table area. So you turn right, walk the length of the bar, and come to an open area with a dance floor, restrooms on the back wall, a small elevated stage in the far right corner (against the front wall), and a back door leading to a deck area. The front wall of the bar is filled with windows and there are two windows that wrap around onto the side wall; the stage takes up the space of four windows. Each window has a neon beer sign in it, all different colored ones as beer signs are wont to be. The four beer signs in the stage area?
Yeah, they're all red ones. The stage is covered with an eerie red glow.
It gets better. There's recessed lighting in the ceiling of the entry/walkway area that leads to the stage, each with a floodlight. This would be great except the last light in the row, the only one illuminating the stage area directly, is a red bulb. Oh and there's a stage light attached to the ceiling off to one side, with a red gel on it, pointed at the stage.
The band brought their light kits, which is great for me in most cases because I'm ready for that combination, but each light bar looks like BLUE-RED-RED-MAGENTA, and with all the red going on already it was tough.
But wait, there's more!
The light bar next to the bassist blew its blue lightbulb, making that one R-R-M. I talked rather persuasively with Moose and got him to put the blue gel on one of the red lights, which helped overall heaps, but since the beer sign in the window behind the bassist was blue, and he has a green bass and was wearing a green shirt, he, unfortunately, actually
NEEDED that red light.
And because all that's not enough, the elevated stage isn't actually large enough for the whole band; only for the drummer. So they stick him on the stage, point him out from the corner, and the frontline stands on the floor, cutting off the corner into a triangle. Meaning that the final picture is:
The drummer is lit entirely with red;
The bassist is lit almost entirely with blue;
The guitarist, standing right next to the light bar, has a kind of magenta-reddish, almost normal color;
and the lead singer is lit just about normally.
I now have white cards permanently (well, with Scotch tape, but they won't get removed) afixed to the bassist's speaker cabinet and the drum set, but neither one of them helped me. I had to take my WB read off the lead singer's set list, which was sitting on the floor, and even that wasn't perfect. It just made everyone sort of uniformly, but fixably, off.
This should be fun.