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As an adjunct to the Tangents blog, the intention with this forum is to answer any questions, and allow a diverse discussion of topics related photography. With that, see it as an open invitation to just climb in and start threads and to respond to any threads.
Determining Colour Temp in Camera for different lighting.
Matrixphoto
Member
Hi Everyone
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I have a rudimentary question. What is the best way to figure out what colour setting to put your camera in.
Obviously if your indoors and there are only tungsten lights I can gel the flash at set the camera for tungsten . Or out door with use day light.
But I recently did some shots in a bowling ally and office party and wasn't quite sure what WB to set camera at in some lighting conditions.
Ive included a un-edited images to show as an example... First one WB was set for Sunny
I know I won't get perfect in camera but I would like to get close, is there a better way then just kinda guessing?
Lou Recine
Owner Matrix Photography and Design
This one was incandescent WB
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In this Discussion
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Comments
The second option is to set a custom WB. Set your camera to custom and point it at a white surface which is being lit by the lights you are shooting under. Make sure you fill the frame with the white surface. You do not need to be in focus.
Take a shot. Your camera will now be set to the correct WB for that lighting condition.
There's a third way, and a neat trick, for Nikon cameras (Canon may have the same option). Go to Live View and look at how the scene looks. If not good, change your WB setting while looking at Live View. As you change the setting you will see the scene change. When it looks close, there's your WB.
I'm sure others who are more knowledgeable will correct me if I'm wrong, but those are the three ways which come to mind.
There are so many variables under those shooting conditions that you need to take into consideration.
Ambient Colour
Flash Colour
Bouncing off of walls ceiling Colour (white or coloured)
Kevin had a good idea re looking at Live Mode, but as you then pointed out, adding flash is a different kettle of fish.
So, first thing is to get your exposure as right as possible because believe it or not that is a factor especially if you under-expose.
So what to do.
1] Before taking a shot, and you know it's going to be under tungsten, I immediately drop Kelvin to around the 3800-4200 +/- 200, and knowing I will be using flash, I put on a 1/2 CTS gel onto the flash head.
The reason for this is flash under normal conditions is pretty cold, especially speedlites on camera, so you need around 5500K for flash, but if you want to balance the ambient (which will be very warm), by dropping the K to around 3800-4200, it will drop the ambient a bit so it's not too warm, but also, that flash with the gel will then throw warm light to compensate for skin tones.
However, that's under ideal conditions as in white walls/ceilings, so if those are coloured you need to adjust.
Simply the best way to adjust, just take a shot, look at the LCD and drop Kelvin or increase it until it looks right.
Remember Neil's (and mine) mantra, "Pleasing Skin Tones", pure and simple.
I know you can get it corrected in post with RAW files, but getting it close in camera first up will also help with exposure because with wrong colour temp, you get different clipping of colour channels, therefore when you correct WB you will see different exposure.
It's *always* preferable to have slight over-exposure than under, because the skin, especially when opened back up if under-exposed, will be muddy and adding wrong WB to that exacerbates the problems.
The moment I am walking into a venue/reception, I put ISO to 1600, f4, 125th; WB to 4200K and start from there as a base.
Sometimes I don't use the gel, because the last wedding I did, it was a giant marquee (and I mean giant 40m long 30m wide and around 8m high) it was all white inside (brilliant) with white 'wedding streamers, banners, etc.' and whitish wall lights with a tungsten chandelier in center so the WB I put was 5600K, no gel and I only had to tweak very slightly for colour.
On the other hand, if you have flash pretty dominant on subject/s, and bouncing off white/light walls and don't care about WB for background you will need around 5500K for skin tones.
Just practice inside your own home, dead easy, and soon you will be nailing it within 1 to 2 shots acceptable from the get go.
Trev.
CTS, different to CTO (CTS Colour Temperature Straw - CTO Colour Temperature Orange) and 'Straw' is the preferred for skin tones, 'Orange', well, who wants orange skin.
CTS
1/2 strength is all you need, if using direct flash with it on, you will need to have WB to around 3800K.
Trev
I use 1/2 CTS, on the long-ago (haha one year ago) advice from Neil.
Trve - SO funny and SO cool to get an insight to your experience. Last week I had an event in a tungsten-lit room. I set the camera to Tungsten, gelled my flash, and I felt I had a very good night. When I sucked the photos into LR and used the eye-dropper, the temperature went from 3250 to 3700, right in your range you described.
Dave
There is one more option if you have the time which takes ambient/flash combined and is dead easy on Nikon.
Get something white, like a tablecloth, get exposure right (ambient and flash) go to your WB settings and choose Custom, take a shot, commit that to the custom WB and bang away and you will be nicely well within the ball park.
The beauty of Nikon compared to Canon with custom WB is you don't need to even have it focused, make sure you fill the frame at least 3/4 and you get a damn great starting point.
In fact, I tested last night and merely filled the frame with a roll of white paper towels on my bench top and when I custom set it, it looked perfect on my LCD as the scene did with my eyes, with flash bouncing off a dark brick wall, white ceiling, white refrigerator door behind/side to me and the 2 fluros I have.
Trev
I should have mentioned that earlier, sorry.
In earlier events in this room, I would expose properly for the people in the photo, and bounce my flash to lift things a bit. But, the crazy ambient has driven me crazy when developing the photos. As I get more experience, I know that in a situation like this, the ambient has to be stamped down by a couple of stops. But for this, there is no way a Speedlite on camera is going to cut it. I haven't looked at anything yet, but what I did, or tried, was under-exposing the ambient by 1-2 stops, and using a Lumiquest 80/20 to fill in. I had it on ETTL, at 0 or +2/3. We'll see ....
On a related topic, I've got another post that was spurred by this discussion. I can't make you do it, but that's the one I wish you would comment and/or give advice on