Playing with WB

[laawaaris]

I shoot about 1 party per week in and around town and have found that while it is fun to meet and chat with some of the new people, it is not that challenging or exciting with regards to photography.

So I decided to try and learn something about my WB at the last party. I shoot Nikon in auto WB and have grown a bit tired of the same old look I've produced - slightly orange, warm tone appearance out of the camera. I have also found that since the photo has a warm tone, it make it difficult to correct the skin tones and make them look not always natural.

Anyhow, I went to the latest party and set my WB to Incandescent. I was shooting at a residence and under normal home lighting conditions (basic ceiling lights - probably incandescent and some chandelier lights). I used a stroboframe to elevate my flash and fired directly at the subjects through a Gary Fong.

Since my Flash is balanced at some warm temperature and my WB was at Incandescent, the photos came out strongly blue.

I found the color correction to be fairly exciting and created to a look I have not yet produced with my Nikon camera.

What do you guys think ... I've included the before and after. The photo still has a blue/somewhat magenta appearance and I cannot seem to get rid of it.

What do you folks think of the final look?

[Cope]

I would try TTL on the flash, flash WB, and elevate the flash 1 click. If you are using an SB-800, try the OEM diffuser. The after is definately better

[janetg]

still not quite right though - too much aqua..

if you are unsure of your white balance, you should experiment with shooting raw until you understand the differences between incandescent (usual home type lighting) - flourescent, etc.

[laawaaris]

hey janet, how did you take the aqua away? color is a bit hard - so much going on ...

i tried myself by using the white balance tool in ACR and then playing with some other color settings ...

did you simply work with the Temperature slider, or did you try other color changes as well?

[janetg]

in LR - i adjusted the blue and aqua sliders - it's hard to work with a web jpg, but you get the idea..

[Cope]

I like Capture NX and Paint Shop Pro Photo XI for jpegs. This is with Capture NX, I adjusted the Neutral and White Control Points.

[laawaaris]

yeah i did some more adjustments to several sliders in ACR and got something close to what you got ...

i think there is a lot to learn - especially about color, fortunately the parties i shoot are not very high pressure, so i can practice exposures, white balance and all that stuff like i tried in this one

thanks!

[rick325]

Originally Posted by laawaaris

I shoot about 1 party per week in and around town and have found that while it is fun to meet and chat with some of the new people, it is not that challenging or exciting with regards to photography.

So I decided to try and learn something about my WB at the last party. I shoot Nikon in auto WB and have grown a bit tired of the same old look I've produced - slightly orange, warm tone appearance out of the camera. I have also found that since the photo has a warm tone, it make it difficult to correct the skin tones and make them look not always natural.

Anyhow, I went to the latest party and set my WB to Incandescent. I was shooting at a residence and under normal home lighting conditions (basic ceiling lights - probably incandescent and some chandelier lights). I used a stroboframe to elevate my flash and fired directly at the subjects through a Gary Fong.

Since my Flash is balanced at some warm temperature and my WB was at Incandescent, the photos came out strongly blue.

I found the color correction to be fairly exciting and created to a look I have not yet produced with my Nikon camera.

What do you guys think ... I've included the before and after. The photo still has a blue/somewhat magenta appearance and I cannot seem to get rid of it.

What do you folks think of the final look?

I will be the first to admit that I know nothing about Nikon cameras. However, the Canon 40D that I use (and all the way down to the Rebel XT I believe) support the concept of "custom white balance" from a photo. The basic process is:

1. take a picture of something flat white (or 18% gray) in the lighting you are going to use.
2. have the camera deduce correct white balance from it.
3. lock in.

I have found this procedure produces unbelievably good white balance in the camera, and is far more accurate than trying to play with the temperature/color space.

Can someone advise the OP on how to do this on a Nikon?

[bobcool]

Rick just offered a great suggestion - use custom white balance and you'll have to do less post-processing out of the camera. I use custom white balance when shooting basketball in those terrible high school gyms and it really cuts down on my computer time. Since every house has a different number of incandescent or tungsten lights, using custom white balance is a great way to quickly dial in proper colors. I use my better bounce card as my white balance card, so I always have it with me. I'd advise you to check your user manual, as different Nikons may have different menus to get to the CWB setting.

Another method is to gel your flash with a Color Temperature Orange (CTO) gel. The reason your pics turned out blue is because the flash is still firing the same white light. If you gel the flash with CTO, then your flash will match the temperature of the incandescent setting on your camera. Check out this article from the Strobist blog:

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/05...-tungsten.html

Anyway, now you have more suggestions - try them all and see what works best for you. Good luck!

Regards,

BobCool

[Donb10]

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/p.../photo-filter/

Try the above tutorial. It works fairly well. I selected the man's hair with the color picker, removed the minus values from the A&B channels, and adjusted the Density slider to 85%.

Just another way to correct color casts.......................

[FreeStar Houston]

I used to have that problem a lot. At first, I just fixed it on the back end by adjusting the color balance. Now I fix it on the front end by adjusting my metering and bounce angle.