White balance for lighting photography

[Paul J Need]

Welcome to the world of digi Gareth :D

 

I find, when there is mixed CT's, the best results come not from the tungsten setting; and not from the custom WB setting but set to "cloudy"

 

Useful I find when tungsten FOH on faces and lots of movers up-stage.

 

For example:http://www.pauljneed.co.uk/nitin01.jpg

[Bobbsy]

Anyone got any hints for getting pictures that look as 'real' as possible in terms of colour temp?

 

Yeah. Whatever is happening in terms of gels, for stage work set your camera to work in "tungsten" rather than auto or daylight. If your camera allows really accurate setting of colour temp, set it for about 25-2600K to allow for dimming etc. This should be something approaching the right colour balance in clear white light...but will look warmer with warm gels and colder with blue...but this is what you see anyway.

 

However, beyond that, get a copy of Photoshop or Paint shop pro and manually colour correct the shots you want to keep so they look the way you remember them on stage. A cheat, I know, but since no camera is EVER the same as the human eye, it's probably more accurate in the long run to do this!

 

Bob

[gareth]

Thanks for the advice so far. The one thing I do know is that I want to avoid using the "auto" WB setting - too much scope for the camera to make up its own mind and do something different with every shot.

 

I never actually thought to experiment with some of the other preset WB settings on the camera (e.g. "Cloudy") - I'll give that I try next time I have a chance.

 

As for Photoshop - my copy of Elements v4 arrived this morning, so I'll be having a play about with it next week sometime! :D

[woody74]

A great article:

 

http://www.apple.com/pro/photo/abaya/

 

-w

[Tomo]

I never actually thought to experiment with some of the other preset WB settings on the camera (e.g. "Cloudy") - I'll give that I try next time I have a chance.

'Cloudy' is usually very close to discharge colour temp, so it's probably the best when working with a large number of discharge fixtures.

 

I always thought it was odd that the cloudier the day, the higher the colour temp.

[Martin]

With a dSLR, I normally shoot RAW files, which let you easily tweak the white balance later. Most RAW converters let you input an exact Kelvin value eg. 3200K for tungsten, 5600K for arc sources or something in between for mixed lighting. I have often found that I need to set very different WB settings for shots from the same show. Some may be around 3200K but others may be right at the maximum of about 10,000K to make them look right.

 

Shooting RAW's does mean more time processing them in the computer later, than just shooting JPEG's. But I find "RAW Shooter" a very fast package for doing this. Best of all the "Essentials" version is free!

 

If you haven't got a dSLR then setting the camera to florescent can sometimes be a good compromise for mixed lighting. The best thing to do is experiment with your camera preset WB settings and use the LCD to judge which look most like the scene in front of you.

 

Happy shooting :D

[TomBrien]

My tip would be, this is assuming you wish to save time or don't have capacity to shoot whole shows with RAW, take one picture of the kinda scene you're dealing with, in this case mixture of tungsten and discharge so ~2800-4000K, and play with the white balance in a RAW editor until you get a WB you like set your camera to that, not sure how to do this on your camera being a Canon man my self. Good choice of camera type.

 

PM me for any thing.

 

All The Best,

Tom

 

Would plug the photography Webstie if I'd finished it!