Where to use Tungsten Setting?

[Photoman61640]

I have been wondering if or when one should use the WB - Tungsten setting.
I use a Nikon D80 dslr. There is no WB Tungsten setting but there is in LR4.

What is the purpose of a Tungsten setting?

[Manfred M]

If you are shooting under tungsten light with jpegs, then the tungsten setting is quite appropriate. If you are shooting RAW, then it does not really matter and you can set things properly in LR.

That being said, I don't understand your saying there is no Tungsten setting. I seem to remember there being a tungsten setting on my brother-in-law's D80; we used it when we were photographing his motorcycle stamp collection using tungsten lighting.

[Photoman61640]

That's strange. Before I sent the thread I went and checked the camera's White Balance settings and didn't not find the Tungsten. Maybe I am miss understanding as to Tungsten lighting. I will have to do some research. Thanks Grumpy Diver

[Saorsa]

Incandescent lights have tungsten filaments. If you are using household incandescents then use the Tungsten setting. It usually has a light bulb as an icon.

With the newer compact flourescent lights they usually show color temperature on the packaging and you can set the WB that way.

[Shadowman]

I have the D60 and it doesn't have tungsten either, incandescent, and fluorescent (which also has sodium and mercury vapor, and cool-white, day white, etc.).

[Saorsa]

Tungsten is incandescent. https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...te-balance.htm has an explanation.

[William W]

The Camera White Balance settings “Tungsten”; “Cloudy”; “Flash”, etc are simple presets to a Colour Temperature (and in some cameras also a preset Tint – but for this conversation I will ignore this factor).

The history of the “TUNGSTEN” setting, is predicated in Tungsten Balanced Film, “TYPE ‘B’ FILM” which was COLOUR BALANCED to produce accurate rendition of colour when the SUBJECT was illuminated by TUNGSTEN STUDIO LIGHTS which have a COLOUR TEMPERATURE of 3200° Kelvin.

(Erroneously these TUNGSTEN STUDIO LIGHTS are sometimes now confused with PHOTOFLOODS or STUDIO FLOODS, but these lamps were in fact different and had a COLOUR TEMPERATURE 3400° Kelvin and “TYPE ‘A’ FILM” was COLOUR BALANCED for use under those lighting conditions.)

Fast forward to today and using DSLRs:
Nikon with their D80 and D90 do have an “INCANDESCENT” white balance preset, and I understand using this setting will pre-set the camera’s white balance to approximately 3000° Kelvin. This convention seems to stay within all the Nikon Range of cameras.

Canon, on the other hand, do have a ”TUNGSTEN” setting for Colour Temperature and using this setting will pre-set the camera to (approximately) 3200° Kelvin.

Although I don’t use the presets in Post Production Software Programmes very often - as far as I remember, all the Post Production Software programmes I use, that have a “TUNGSTEN” WHITE BALANCE setting, keep the same technically correct Photographic Convention: therefore using that preset will make a correction to 3200°Kelvin – (I haven’t got Lightroom loaded on the laptop I am presently using but I am reasonably confident that I am correct – you can check that as usually next to the name “TUNGSTEN” there is a number “3200” .)

***

If reasonably accurate Colour Balance, SOOC, is the desired outcome, it is NOT a good idea to use either “INCANDESCENT” -or- “TUNGSTEN” as the white balance pre-set if one is shooting under the older style household ‘incandescent filament lights’.

The reason is that (the older style) household incandescent lights usually are in the wattage range 40 watts to 100 watts and the Colour Temperature of these relative low wattage lights is actually closer to 1850° ~ 2200° Kelvin.

(Noted: the more modern ‘energy saver household lights’ - Compact Fluorescent Lamps do have a slightly higher Colour Temperature being around 2400 ~ 2900.)

So in this case, it is actually better to either:
Manually preset Degrees Kelvin to the lowest setting
-Or-
Make a Custom Balance using a Standard Photographic Grey Card or professional White Card, such as “WhiBal”

In many CANON cameras, using the CUSTOM BALANCE, (Card Method) affords the camera to be set at a lower Colour Temperature than when using preset degrees Kelvin, and this is the method that I typically use when shooting Available Light, under the older style Household Incandescent Lights.

*

In the camera (I use Canon DSLRs), I do often use “TUNGSTEN” as a White Balance pre-set when shooting under tungsten (correctly balanced) lights – typically a T.V. Telecast Lighting Set or a Stage Lighting Set.

WW

[Photoman61640]

Thanks to all of you photographers that replied.

I now understand the Tungsten setting and when to use it. I also now know that Incandescent light uses Tungsten.
My Nikon D80 has the Incandescent setting.

I also have been testing out the Tungsten setting in LR on some of my landscape/sunset photos. The image shows up blue. After making adjustments I think I have come up with a pleasing look.

Don't know any will generate any interest by others but it looks good to me.

Thanks again for all the import.

Gordon

[Thlayle]

An added note: Gordon, I usually do not worry about my WB until post-processing, though I try to always set it for what I think will work best. As Manfred noted right away, RAW files make the WB something you can just deal with in post-processing.

Besides using it for shooting in the presence of incandescent lighting, I like the Tungsten setting for night photography, something I do a lot of. It is a bit too blue in its tone, but I like to see it when reviewing my shots and it makes a good starting point in post-processing. If I ever figure out how to create a custom WB for my Canon T2i, I will add a special one just for 'night.'

Thanks to all of you photographers that replied.

I now understand the Tungsten setting and when to use it. I also now know that Incandescent light uses Tungsten.
My Nikon D80 has the Incandescent setting.

I also have been testing out the Tungsten setting in LR on some of my landscape/sunset photos. The image shows up blue. After making adjustments I think I have come up with a pleasing look.

Don't know any will generate any interest by others but it looks good to me.

Thanks again for all the import.

Gordon

[SteveF]

Ahhh, Bill you have reminded me of those wonderful days with film...

I thoroughly enjoy playing with white balance when I have the time. A long period of white balance study went on in my head after going digital and the one who taught me most was a retired lighting grip from BBC studios London some 10years ago. Despite being over 70 years old then he carefully explained what the film guys did to balance lighting and how long it took to gel the windows at an outside broadcast to tungsten because they shot most of their production and still do I understand under tungsten.

This led me to explore gelling my flashguns with 1/4 or 1/2 cto and setting my camera to tungsten indoors and it yields perfectly balanced images provided the blinds/curtains are drawn at night.

[rpcrowe]

"how long it took to gel the windows at an outside broadcast to tungsten because they shot most of their production"

In the days I was shooting 16mm film professionally, I always used tungsten balanced (3200 K) film. I would use an Wratten 85 filter to balance daylight to 3200 K. An 85B filter would balance daylingt to 3400 K. I would also use an 85 filter combined with a .3 or .6 this was not a pair of filters but it was a single filter designated as an 85N3 or 85N6. We mostly shot with 16mm Ektachrome Commercial film which was balanced for 3200 K and had a film speed of ASA (equal to ISO) of 25 under tungsten and 16 outdoors using an 85 filter.

Sure there were faster films on the market such as 16mm high speed Ektachrome but the quality was not equal to Ektachrome Commercial.

In those days it was a no-no among professional photographers to have windows appear very bright. Since we couldn't light the interior of a room on location to the brightness of the outside sun, we would either avoid including a window in any of our shoots (easiest fix), shoot at night (if possible) or as a last resort we gelled the window with an 85N3 or 85N6 gel which was time consuming a quite expensive because often the gel would be scratched and unusable for another time.

When I first did documentary filming, we lit our location sets with Lowell Light Kits (same company that now produces camera bags among other items). The Lowell light kit used PAR-38 flood or spotlight bulbs and we used a transformer to boost the wall voltage so that the PAR-38 would burn at approximately 3200 K. The transformer was very-very heavy and could be very expensive when traveling on commercial flights because of the excess baggage weight (I often traveled with a thousand pounds of gear). Luckily in those days we could lock our camera and gear cases...

Soon after I started shooting, we began using Halogen lights which we could get in 3200K balanced bulbs. These were far more efficient and easier to use than the Lowell Light Kit because we did not need a transformer.

The downside of lighting in those days was the heat that it produced and the wattage consumed. I remember shooting on an old Navy Admiral's equally old home that had old timey minimal wiring and I kept blowing the fuses (old screw-in types) for even the minimum amount of light.

I would have sold my soul to the devil to have access to a set of battery operated LED lights for location photography.

Hollywood type productions were usually shot with carbon arc lighting which was impossible for a documentary film crew to carry and use because of weight, size and power consumption...