Jump to content
 

Please use M,M&M only for topics that do not fit within other forum areas. All topics posted here await admin team approval to ensure they don't belong elsewhere.

Theatrical layout lighting - colour balance advice sought


 Share

Recommended Posts

Hello

 

I have a problem.............................

 

I have an exhibition layout based on a large Chinese industrial city in 2004. In those days (and probably today) they were very heavily polluted and when I was there at that time I rarely if ever saw the sun.

 

Consequently, I have never built an exhibition lighting rig. Let me make this clear, if I was modelling Cuba or The Philippines I would flood the layout with white light, but I'm not modelling Cuba or The Philipines.

 

Now, my operating team are trying to persuade me to add a lighting rig ... because, quote, "all other layouts have one!"  I am yet to be convinced, but a new idea has been aired - add not white LEDs but some other colour - orange? 

 

Are there any theatre lighting engineers out there with any ideas

 

To give you an idea - here is an early version of our backscene

 

DSC_0373.JPG.ef503c9e94d5e850a0bc8c72064e377c.JPG

Edited by TEAMYAKIMA
Link to post
Share on other sites

There's an article in the 1991 MRJ No.46 edition by Dave Rowe entitled "Morning, Noon and Night Layout Lighting" detailing how he experimented with lighting effects to simulate the changing hue of sunlight at various times of the day.

 

Since being written a lot of the technology will have changed such as LED lighting and modern dimmers but the reasoning should still be pertinent to your situation.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Paul,  very unconvinced that you need a lighting rig.  If my memory is correct you have lights within the apartment blocks, the shops and in the passenger carriages.  Any overhead lighting will leech out the on layout lighting.  You could add yard towers and street lighting (?) but otherwise leave well alone.  

 

Most venues nowadays are well lit - even Warley!  Bill

  • Like 1
  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, bbishop said:

Paul,  very unconvinced that you need a lighting rig.  If my memory is correct you have lights within the apartment blocks, the shops and in the passenger carriages.  Any overhead lighting will leech out the on layout lighting.  You could add yard towers and street lighting (?) but otherwise leave well alone.  

 

Most venues nowadays are well lit - even Warley!  Bill

 

Bill

 

Personally, I agree with you. especially as I have just spent weeks and weeks adding lighting in the coaches so that viewers can see all the details I've added.

 

IMG_20210130_183940.jpg.b9d71d68cf1203b86273325efc8a1a5b.jpg

 

 

I/we are trying to make the layout more viewer friendly and more eye-catching and it is my operating team who think a pelmet with lighting will achieve that goal. I agree with you that improving the lighting will diminish the impact of the lit shops and passenger trains.

 

The suggestion has been made that using orange(?) lighting will brighten the layout but enhance the polluted atmosphere concept of the backscene - I am prepared to experiment just to keep them happy but personally I think it will devalue all the work I've done on lit interiors.

Edited by TEAMYAKIMA
  • Like 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

I’ve seen your layout and reckon it’s one of the best evocations of a grim industrial scene I’ve ever encountered; I’d agree that it’s fine as it is in all it’s concrete grittiness.  If you are going for a lighting rig, I reckon warm white leds with different power levels will recreate the pale polluted dusty atmosphere, diffused as much as possible to avoid the ‘bright sunny day’ look. 

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I’ve seen your layout and reckon it’s one of the best evocations of a grim industrial scene I’ve ever encountered; I’d agree that it’s fine as it is in all it’s concrete grittiness.  If you are going for a lighting rig, I reckon warm white leds with different power levels will recreate the pale polluted dusty atmosphere, diffused as much as possible to avoid the ‘bright sunny day’ look. 

 

Thanks, I'll experiment with that

Link to post
Share on other sites

Will the layout also need some kind of cover to reduce the amount of background light and help frame the scene? 

 

+1 for the LED colour changing tape (currently through the remote as I'm yet to program it from an Arduino), I tend to use a dim orange or brighter blue/white on a nighttime project, or sometimes the Hollywood theatrical blue that looks good but quite unrealistic when you think about it. 

 

I did think it could be used to balance the unnatural ambient light used in some venues, but found that that is something your eyes become accustomed to and any corrections have a reverse effect.  

Edited by 298
Link to post
Share on other sites

As an experiment and to give you something recognisable I delved into a borrowed collection of Cuban stock to pose this Chino on my nighttime HO layout "Blue Heron" and selected different colours on the LED strip controller. There are obvious limitations with the way the camera responds and exposes the colours, but as examples we have...

 

Blue:

PXL_20210223_065144017.jpg.7c31df2cd180c46ba3f9a1d0a763b817.jpg

 

Light blue:

PXL_20210223_065119203.jpg.0322613a85c8ebefa498bf2a2ded9280.jpg

 

Yellow:

PXL_20210223_065022657.jpg.3fb21a34999a49b2ef079cd382d89ac0.jpg

 

Orange:

PXL_20210223_065112280.jpg.93cbb5ea46b1d11d5406cb2d384aceee.jpg

 

Something else I need to do is increase the brightness of the sodium lighting in the background and the globes of the street lamps so they illuminate the ground. It's been fun building a nocturnal layout but the lighting projects have increased the build time by several fold as I reckon on something more complex such as a vehicle it takes an hour to add one LED, once it's been mounted and any unwanted light bleed corrected. 

  • Like 3
  • Craftsmanship/clever 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Something to bear in mind regarding a "daylight" scene is that even on a horribly overcast and gloomy day, lighting levels outside are surprisingly high when compared with even a well-lit indoor space. Good daylight is about 10 000 lux, an overcast day 1 000lux, and even commercial offices are only lit to about 500 lux at the desk.

 

"Gloominess" is as much a function of colour-temperature as illumination level*, and it may be that TY's layout operators really do need more light, and that the key to retaining the gritty look is to get the colour-temperature right.

 

An overcast sky has a colour-temperature c6500k, which will fall towards perhaps 3000k at a rosy sunset. Nice, cheerful daylight is above 8000k. Many "daylight" lighting installations only get to c5000k**, and you might have to buy specialist, commercial kit, to get above that. To repeat at the risk of patronising, these figures define the colour, not the intensity - you can have a lot of light, or a little, at any colour.

 

*Semi-relevant anecdote: for a while in the 80s, I worked in an office which was prone to winter-afternoon gloom, to the degree where one of my colleagues would routinely nod-off. It had really poorly-designed lighting, based on lots of low-wattage filament lamps, which when turned-on instantly made it seem darker than it had been before, simply because their colour-temperature was too far on the red side of the scale.

 

** Google instantly found "nature white daylight" LED strip, which only achieves 4500k, the colour of a very overcast day!

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
  • Like 2
  • Informative/Useful 2
  • Interesting/Thought-provoking 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

PS: This is very useful as an intro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruithof_curve#:~:text=At typical indoor office illuminance levels of about,are even lower (between 2400 and 2700 K).

 

This is all about creating pleasant lighting, but TY may actually be aiming to create unpleasant lighting, probably on the red, rather than the blue, side of the scale, to get the desired atmosphere.

Edited by Nearholmer
Link to post
Share on other sites

To illustrate the point about outdoor and indoor lighting levels and colours, how’s about this.

 

The window reveal in my study, lit by a fairly gloomy and overcast afternoon, and part of the wall of the study, lit by the “daylight” ceiling lamp that everyone in the family, except me, says is far too bright, and far too harsh. It probably achieves 400 lux at 4200k at the wall. My guess is that the light from outdoors is achieving well over 1000 lux at maybe 5000k.

 

The paint is the same colour throughout - pale sky grey.

 

 

310668C0-C9D8-4827-89B4-0B9858A050BF.jpeg
 

And, another shot, nothing different except what the phone-came is using as its reference point. Notice that the shadows fall into the room, making the point that even poor exterior daylight is brighter than good interior lighting.

 

 

252455B7-6574-43C7-914F-E88260939455.jpeg

Edited by Nearholmer
Link to post
Share on other sites

On 23/02/2021 at 13:28, Nearholmer said:

Something to bear in mind regarding a "daylight" scene is that even on a horribly overcast and gloomy day, lighting levels outside are surprisingly high when compared with even a well-lit indoor space. Good daylight is about 10 000 lux, an overcast day 1 000lux, and even commercial offices are only lit to about 500 lux at the desk.

 

"Gloominess" is as much a function of colour-temperature as illumination level*, and it may be that TY's layout operators really do need more light, and that the key to retaining the gritty look is to get the colour-temperature right.

 

 

Thank you so much for this. As I feared this is a subject which requires considerable research and experimentation.

 

 

  • Funny 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

Thinking more about this, the challenge is to create something that people perceive as a gloomy afternoon (sounds as if you already have!), rather than the actual lighting conditions of a gloomy afternoon, because if you do the latter, I think people might well perceive it as too bright, and too blue, against the ambient lighting of a even a "well lit" exhibition hall.

 

Trouble is, our eyes are fairly good at adjusting for different levels and colours of lighting, and then our brains confuse matters further by making comparisons that we aren't even conscious of.

 

Maybe see if you can increase the lighting level a bit for the benefit of operators, while retaining the colour ........ more lamps, of exactly the same kind? You can always switch the extra ones off if you find it too bright!

Link to post
Share on other sites

On 23/02/2021 at 13:47, Nearholmer said:

PS: This is very useful as an intro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruithof_curve#:~:text=At typical indoor office illuminance levels of about,are even lower (between 2400 and 2700 K).

 

This is all about creating pleasant lighting, but TY may actually be aiming to create unpleasant lighting

 

One of my team members (Luke) has agreed to build a mock-up of a lighting pelmet and we will set up one board and experiment and come to a consensus  

 

Unfortunately, I can't find the original photo, but here is a pdf of a something we display with the layout to explain graphically what we are trying to emulate...........

 

INDUSTRIAL CHINA.pdf

Link to post
Share on other sites

Adding grey lighting?

 

I'm wondering whether lighting alone will achieve the desired effects, especially if the models and scenery are coloured too strongly.

 

The effect of pollution is to reduce visibility and soften lighting.  I tend to judge daylight darkness by whether shadows form at all - they do with light cloud cover, but can disappear altogether on the worst days.

 

With distance all colours fade to grey (more strongly with rain/water vapour/pollutants) so there should be very little contrast in the backscenes; a mere suggestion of what might be lurking through the gloom.  For an industrial or heavily-polluted landscape, the "grey fade" might carry a hint of yellow or orange to give an impression of something nasty and acrid hanging in the air. 

 

By way of example, I've taken the original backscene picture and reduced its contrast and slightly lifted the brightness.  Is it closer to what is desired?  (The black on the roofs of the building is still too heavy).  Truth is, there may have to be some compromise between modelling skill/detail and impressionist art!

 

_yakimia.jpg.755aa3b2de74fc9332522876aa2af28e.jpg

 

 

  • Agree 1
Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 26/02/2021 at 16:40, EddieB said:

 

With distance all colours fade to grey (more strongly with rain/water vapour/pollutants) so there should be very little contrast in the backscenes; a mere suggestion of what might be lurking through the gloom.  For an industrial or heavily-polluted landscape, the "grey fade" might carry a hint of yellow or orange to give an impression of something nasty and acrid hanging in the air. 

 

 

Being the "Luke" that Teamyakima is talking about I thought I should throw in a comment. The smog that Teamyakima is talking about overpowers any grey that occurs through distance. It is sickly yellow-green (basically unburnt hydrocarbons) that pervades everything.  A confession, I haven't seen it in China but I did see / smell / taste something very similar behind the Iron Curtain in its final years. It can reduce visibility to just a few city blocks! Teamyakima and I have been talking about theatrical lighting films. A warm white led strip with a film, and slightly too little lighting should give about the right feel (subject to experiment) of sticky gloom...

 

But the first priority is to work on the pelmet...

 

Luke

Link to post
Share on other sites

On 23/02/2021 at 13:47, Nearholmer said:

This is all about creating pleasant lighting, but TY may actually be aiming to create unpleasant lighting, probably on the red, rather than the blue, side of the scale, to get the desired atmosphere.

You have been very thought provoking and knowledgeable on this highly technical subject and I value your opinion very highly.

 

I see that there are two lectures/demos this weekend on the subject of lighting at the virtual exhibition. Will you be watching?  Your opinion of the views out forward will be very interesting as you are aware of my issues/concerns.

 

Paul

Link to post
Share on other sites

I've used LED colour changing spotlights bought from Tatbay on "Wednesford" in order to create different ambient lighting conditions, and was surprised to find that for me, the best setting to simulate a gloomy day was a teal/turquoise colour at about half setting (you can dial back the level of lighting as well).  For an exhibition the LED strip which can be set to different colours would be ideal and not too difficult to hide behind a pelmet.  You should be able to find a suitable combination of colour and intensity which may not be what you first thought.

  • Like 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said:

Will you be watching? 

 

Thank you for the kind words.

 

Unlikely that I will be able to spare much time to look at the exhibition, but if I can get to see the lighting discussion, I will.

 

Have now rediscovered the colour/intensity variable LED strip that I bought ages ago, and am under instruction to fit it as a supplementary fitting in the kitchen/diner, in a spot near the patio doors that isn't well-lit by the main fitting, so I will probably have a crack at that next week, which will give lots of opportunity to experiment with model railway applications in mind, and to compare with external ambient lighting.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...