Indoor Bounce Flash

EYESIC

Hey guys I recently shot some stuff at our local church... When bouncing off the ceilings or walls I notice is get this yellowish tone to my pictures? I this where i should be using CTO's? I Kind of fixed it in post but just wondering if there's a way of getting rid of that right off the bat.

Ive been shooting more stuff, I would like to get some critique from you guys, I think i have improved quite a bit.. don't mind some of the Bar Photography I got paid in beer and well I wasn't 100% haha.. for now its just a hobby page but I really want to get serious about it, let me know.

www.facebook.com/eyesicphotography

Corojo

Images??? Ed K.

EYESIC

Sorry to give you a link, but I'm not at home.. this one was a tad bit yellow, I changed the settings in camera raw and cooled it down a bit. My WB was set to Flash.. I believe the lighting indoors was fluorescent

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=470635959683132&set=a.315934838486579.76449.314692575277472&type=3&theater

jhilgers

Did you set your camera to a specific WB Kelvin setting after putting on the CTO gel? Normally if your using CTO or CTS gels, you will want to set your camera's WB to the correct Kelvin setting for that gel.

Trev

Yes, absolutely as jhilgers stated, you most definitely need to adjust WB in Kelvin to offset the filter, and with the gel, 1/2 gels or full gels?

1/2 gels WB around 3700K, full around 2800K, however, this could also vary still further as it depends on what cast you may be still getting from a bounced source, walls, ceilings, etc.

It's a fine line when dealing with mixed lighting and the only thing I think to worry about is getting good skin tones. You don't want green/blue/red tones to influence the skin, nothing looks good in that, unless you are going 'arty' on an image.

That sample image is a bit too warm, but not only that, there are also some shadows under the eyes, too much downlighting from bounce, need to adjust position of the flash.

EYESIC

No CTO or CTS gels were used, my initial question was should I use gels indoors? Thanks for the advice, I kind of overlooked the shadows under the eyes, its very frustrating when trying to achieve "good Skin tones" since I have a hard time distinguishing good skin tones, I always look our for reddish and yellowish tones. It's just taking me longer to nail that part.

Also my flash head is Flimsy now, it movies around quite a bit with any little movement.. time to get a new one.

Thank you guys your critique is very welcomed!

Trev

Sorry, I merely thought you had used it and wondered if using was correct, misread it as a quick scan and looking at the image.

So, 'should' you use to offset this, no, not all the time at all, it means the walls/ceiling were maybe off white in color or you used Auto WB as a re-read did not indicate how you achieved the WB you got.

Generally inside, even with white walls/ceiling, I find the WB will still need to be in the 4500K range even with flash as there maybe other influences or the flash is not totally dominant, especially if daylight lighting comes into the room.

You need to gauge this on the LCD screen at time of shooting and adjust WB from there.

Using gels indoors, say at night in a reception, would mainly be to try to balance strong tungsten lighting in the background, but you need to still balance skin tones and the WB settings I stated above post would be relevant to the type/strength of gel used.

What it does is to make the temp warm, so you need to lower the WB to match and this then lowers the tungsten warmth in the background and gives a more pleasing image.

However, there is no criteria strictly to do so, just means the background tungsten will become warmer if just using flash since you need the flash to be a pleasant skin tone and since flash is cooler, a WB of around 5200K+ is in the range, as long as no other lighting influences are there, like timber/brick/colored walls.

Neil vN

EYESIC said: my initial question was should I use gels indoors?

It mostly (nearly always?) depends on the ambient light.
If there is a lot of Incandescent lighting, then it makes sense to gel your flash.

Here's a good start:
http://neilvn.com/tangents/2011/03/15/wedding-photography-dealing-with-the-videographers-light/

EYESIC

^ Awesome info Neil! Great article. It's exactly what I was looking for. Also thanks to all who replied.