wite balance..what color is flash?

Qarik

so I have been taking some pictures recently at holiday events..the shots I get seem just a little off as far as the lighting. 6 months ago they would have seemed okay to me. About a month ago I finally took my WB setting off "auto" to account for flash or regular light bulbs or fluorescent lights. That definitely helped but a lot of times I am using my flash in conjunction with tungsten or flurorecent lighting and my developing eye still sees room for improvement.

After some reading on the strobist blog..I think the mixed lighting is the reason for the "offness". So I am going to DIY some velcro gel flashes, orange and green, on my flash to try and correct that. Some questions:

1) how many of you do this? is this common? it seems easy enough.

2) what color is the flash?

3) what color is natual sunlight..say noon time vs sunset/sun rise vs shade? I would assume sunset/sunrise is orangish..is that different from tungsten? is there a gel for these?

okay that is enough for now.

ziggy53

I moved this to the Technique forum where you will find many similar threads.

Anytime you are not shooting in a studio type environment there is a great possibility of encountering unusual or even mixed white balance and color temperatures.

If the flash is the dominant, or only, light source you may think of it as somewhere between 5000K and 5500K for a daylight balanced flash bulb. If you don't know whether it is daylight balanced or not, it's best to test using a known white target or competent white balance aid.

We have a good discussion relating to that technique here:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=94149
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=90438

At any rate, I tend to think of white balance as a starting point as opposed to an absolute entity or measure. I would much rather get flesh tones acceptable than worry about whites being absolutely white, unless the subject itself is supposed to be white as in a product shot.

pathfinder

Qarik wrote:

so I have been taking some pictures recently at holiday events..the shots I get seem just a little off as far as the lighting. 6 months ago they would have seemed okay to me. About a month ago I finally took my WB setting off "auto" to account for flash or regular light bulbs or fluorescent lights. That definitely helped but a lot of times I am using my flash in conjunction with tungsten or flurorecent lighting and my developing eye still sees room for improvement.

After some reading on the strobist blog..I think the mixed lighting is the reason for the "offness". So I am going to DIY some velcro gel flashes, orange and green, on my flash to try and correct that. Some questions:

1) how many of you do this? is this common? it seems easy enough.

2) what color is the flash?

3) what color is natual sunlight..say noon time vs sunset/sun rise vs shade? I would assume sunset/sunrise is orangish..is that different from tungsten? is there a gel for these?

okay that is enough for now.

1) Gelling flashes is easy - some gels, a little velcro and you're in business. There is really no right answer other than what looks good to your eye. 1/4 CTO or 1/2 CTO are frequently used to match flash to ambient tungsten, or to simulate late afternoon sunlight out of doors. Full CTO gets pretty orange to my eye. Green can help match with Fluorescent, but Fluorescents can be all over the map. I shot in Coffee house recently, and realized what I thought were tungsten lights were the new round bulb, fluorescents and they were giving me wild green casts with a tungsten white balance setting.


2.) Flash is "supposed to match sunlight" and many manufacturers list their flashes as 5600 Kelvin. I find 5400 K frequently works for me in Camera Raw. But it is better to use one of the custom white balance tools I wrote about in Ziggy's second link above.

3) natural daylight varies greatly from 3500K at sunset ( give or take 1 K ) to 10K to 14K in the shade at altitudes some time. Around 5K works well for afternoon sunlight, but it will vary greatly depending on what it reflects off of - sand, grass, buildings, etc.