Using Flash - Speedlites...........white balance
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I did that for a while, but found in mixed light conditions it didn't give good results. I now set mine to 'cloudy'; I read somewhere that was better for interior shots (I shoot interiors). Someone with better knowledge than me will confirm if this is a good idea or not!! I'm thinking about using gels on the speed lights to match the ambient light, just need more work to try it out. Getting good consistent WB across the picture is a problem for me.
itsdavedotnet
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A really basic explanation...
Speedlights (and basically every flash out there) are balanced to be the colour of daylight, which is defined as being a certain value (5600K for the techie-inclined).
This is a measure of the colour of the light being about equal to the colour of light that you get on a bright day - and is actually relatively blue, as light goes.
Often, we tend to want to see things slightly 'warmer' than either reality, or we're not lucky enough to be shooting in bright sunlight. (think: people put on fake tans and stuff right? same thing!)
"cloudy" white balance makes your images come out a bit 'warmer' - ie oranger - than daylight balance, and it's this slight tan, matched with the fact that especially in the UK, it's rarely all that sunny - that is what you're seeing as 'better results'.
Accurate colour and what looks best are rarely the same thing - if you shoot a grey card and then match your images to that reading, it gives you a 'true' accurate place to start from, but a lot of the time you'll want to adjust the toning of your images.
Gelling flashes comes in useful particularly when shooting indoors.
Normal house lightblubs use tungsten or now flourescent fittings, which are somewhere in the 3000K range - and look very orange.
If you set your camera so that everything looks 'right' in the photo under just tungsten lights, and then add a flash - everything lit up by the flash will look very blue, cold and generally not nice (though this or vice versa is a neat trick to create a dramatic mood in an image).
So what you can do is put a small 'CTO' - Correct To Orange gel on your flash, and it will make the light coming out of the flash the same colour as the tungsten bulbs, and therefore everything in the photo will look 'right'.
Speedlights (and basically every flash out there) are balanced to be the colour of daylight, which is defined as being a certain value (5600K for the techie-inclined).
This is a measure of the colour of the light being about equal to the colour of light that you get on a bright day - and is actually relatively blue, as light goes.
Often, we tend to want to see things slightly 'warmer' than either reality, or we're not lucky enough to be shooting in bright sunlight. (think: people put on fake tans and stuff right? same thing!)
"cloudy" white balance makes your images come out a bit 'warmer' - ie oranger - than daylight balance, and it's this slight tan, matched with the fact that especially in the UK, it's rarely all that sunny - that is what you're seeing as 'better results'.
Accurate colour and what looks best are rarely the same thing - if you shoot a grey card and then match your images to that reading, it gives you a 'true' accurate place to start from, but a lot of the time you'll want to adjust the toning of your images.
Gelling flashes comes in useful particularly when shooting indoors.
Normal house lightblubs use tungsten or now flourescent fittings, which are somewhere in the 3000K range - and look very orange.
If you set your camera so that everything looks 'right' in the photo under just tungsten lights, and then add a flash - everything lit up by the flash will look very blue, cold and generally not nice (though this or vice versa is a neat trick to create a dramatic mood in an image).
So what you can do is put a small 'CTO' - Correct To Orange gel on your flash, and it will make the light coming out of the flash the same colour as the tungsten bulbs, and therefore everything in the photo will look 'right'.
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Yes thanks Dave, that's good...I think I'm on the right track.
I use a neutral grey card, however I think that is giving correct colour for the light that falls on the card, but I sometimes end up with a (partial) colour cast elsewhere in the shot. Hence my thoughts to try to at least get a consistent colour everywhere in the room by gelling the speedlights so whatever PP corrections I make affect everywhere in the room equally.
I tend to have the interior lights off, but still am getting a mismatch from the ambient (mainly daylight through the window) and the speedlights. I guess if the interior lights are on I use a CTO gel; if the ambient is mainly sunlight a CTB?
I use a neutral grey card, however I think that is giving correct colour for the light that falls on the card, but I sometimes end up with a (partial) colour cast elsewhere in the shot. Hence my thoughts to try to at least get a consistent colour everywhere in the room by gelling the speedlights so whatever PP corrections I make affect everywhere in the room equally.
I tend to have the interior lights off, but still am getting a mismatch from the ambient (mainly daylight through the window) and the speedlights. I guess if the interior lights are on I use a CTO gel; if the ambient is mainly sunlight a CTB?
Marcus Geezer
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If shooting commercially at corporate gigs where it is practically a 'shoot and burn' with mixed ambient lightsources probably including flash then I just shoot auto wb unless I'm after a particular look. If purely speedlite(s) then flash wb.
By the way, great post Davedotnet.
To the OP. Can I ask, why you ask?
By the way, great post Davedotnet.
To the OP. Can I ask, why you ask?
OP
admirable
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Thanks eveyone!
I had an occasion to shoot an event in a hall with florescent lighting and for the 1st time set the WB to fluorescent . I just wondered if everyone else set the WB manually or just left it on auto, especially when using flash.
I had an occasion to shoot an event in a hall with florescent lighting and for the 1st time set the WB to fluorescent . I just wondered if everyone else set the WB manually or just left it on auto, especially when using flash.
scattyblonde
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I usually shoot raw with auto wb, then anything that isn't quite right I fix when processing.
HoppyUK
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How did they turn out? Fluorescent lights come in about twenty different shades of colour - anything from green to pink to close to daylight, and fluroscents often don't emit a full spectum so some colours can be 'missing' or are very muted.
Hard to get right with a preset WB, unless you're lucky. Even a custom WB, while technically should be pretty good, doesn't always look right. Best way is to adjust in post processing for the best compromise.
I agree shooting in Raw and sorting out white balance in PP. My issue is that I have part of the (interior) lit by ambient (normally sunlight through a window), and the other side of the room and shadow areas lit by flash, the variation in temp causes a cast in one area or the other. In Aperture there is no white balance brush, whatever adjustment you choose is applied across the whole frame, so it is difficult to achieve a consistent balance across the shot (there are colour adjustment brushes, but before long I've spent ages jerking around with different adjustments and lose track of what I'm trying to achieve; there must be an easier way!).
I've struggled to get perfect results in PP (I don't use LightRoom, so can't comment if it has selective WB adjustments); so am going to try balancing the temp with gels; unless anyone has a better idea? I like the idea of the ColorChecker Passport, but it isn't fully compatible with Aperture...I'm tempted by LR4 but am hopeful whenever Aperture 4 comes out there will be better WB controls (along with a couple of other improvements).
I've struggled to get perfect results in PP (I don't use LightRoom, so can't comment if it has selective WB adjustments); so am going to try balancing the temp with gels; unless anyone has a better idea? I like the idea of the ColorChecker Passport, but it isn't fully compatible with Aperture...I'm tempted by LR4 but am hopeful whenever Aperture 4 comes out there will be better WB controls (along with a couple of other improvements).
HoppyUK
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Gels is the only way. It's almost impossible to adjust colour temp selectively in software, unless there's a clear dividing line in the image.
I use a CTO gel (light orange) to balance flash to tungsten room light quite a lot. Works well. Folks that do this sort of thing frequently have a selection of gels and balance things up on the flash as best they can by trial and error, plus experience of different types of artificial light.
When in doubt, balance for the main subject.
JonathanRyan
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What Richard said.
People saying "fix it in post" are possibly forgetting that many scenes have no "correct" whibal. Mixed lighting means that for a global correction you have to balance to one light or the other.
As for whibal brushes.....2 mins to fit a gel for every pic or 10 mins per image? I prefer pretouch....
People saying "fix it in post" are possibly forgetting that many scenes have no "correct" whibal. Mixed lighting means that for a global correction you have to balance to one light or the other.
As for whibal brushes.....2 mins to fit a gel for every pic or 10 mins per image? I prefer pretouch....