Shots by Candlelight

adbsgicom

I had a 1/2 CTO on the flash bounced away from her off the ceiling, but otherwise the light was from candles. In the first two, which color balance do you think works better, the fully orange, or the slightly less orange? They are all shot a ISO 1250, 1/200s, f/4 on the 5Dmk2 24-105 f/4L lens.

1. About right?


2. Too Red?


3. Just liked this as a close-up...


C&C very much appreciated....

Thanks.

Jazmyn76

Completely amature input here, but I like them both, for different reasons. The more orang-y one would be a great postcard type, because the orange in it really gives that feel of candle light. The second one shows her beautiful complexion more. So, yea- not much help, I know. Love that close up candid too!

lilmomma

Hey Andrew!

I think the first one is REALLY orange. I'm on an uncalibrated work monitor but it's pretty orange. the second one is better but seems a tad to the magenta side. Like i said, work monitor so take it for what it's worth. That all being said, i'm not sure the candle light works here, it almost seems like it's there is too much light for what it is, like I expect the background behind her to not be lit up as much. Is there another light source somewhere? I see a reflection of something in the glass behind her and on the one candle holder. I think you should try to turn out all the lights and just light the candles. The coloring might look more natural that way, I think. Other than that, beautiful daughter as usual... sorry i've been MIA lately!

adbsgicom

Thanks Jazmyn and Melissa.
Melissa, do you think a little vignetting (and blacking out the window) helps?

Luckily, there are 4 more nights....

divamum

lilmomma wrote:

Hey Andrew!

I think the first one is REALLY orange. I'm on an uncalibrated work monitor but it's pretty orange. the second one is better but seems a tad to the magenta side. Like i said, work monitor so take it for what it's worth.

And I'm on a calibrated monitor. Try another white balance - knock back the magenta a tad and keep juussstt enough warmth in it to maintain candlelight while losing out and out orange. Sometimes reducing vibrance and saturation just a tad helps too.

Love the shots!!

lilmomma

Definitely makes a difference! Still a touch orange though, I'm with Diva on reducing saturation, although you don't want to lose the warmth.

He he just got the 4 more nights thing. yep, I still stand with trying it again with all lights off, I think you'll get the natural looking candlelight glow/warmth you're looking for.

kidzmom

Hey Andrew! I tend to agree with Melissa that the bg was too lit for the idea of a candlelight shot. I think the edge burn helps a LOT and I actually like the color in the 2nd shot more. The close up is a great one to highlight her THICK eyelashes, WOW! You'll have it down with 4 nights to go (if your model still wants to pose that is!!!) Cute idea!!

Swartzy

Bring your overall K-temp down..start at around 4000 and work up to around 5000 and see what catches your eye. These are so overly orange/yellow that it looks like someone was having their way with the hue/saturation sliders

adbsgicom

Swartzy wrote:

Bring your overall K-temp down..start at around 4000 and work up to around 5000 and see what catches your eye. These are so overly orange/yellow that it looks like someone was having their way with the hue/saturation sliders

No such fun. Just too far toward the yellow. The pp on this was noise reduction and crop and little bit of screen and de-redding in the eyes. But going back to the original dng, looks like around 3800 yields a decent starting point... I'll see what emanates from there. Obviously I went too far in leaving the orange glow in place, but one still wants some oranger light than normal in a shot like this, right?

Caspian

I'll be the odd man out. I like the more orange shot. If you want it to appear that the candles are providing the primary light, the image will have a very orange cast from the low temperature light of the candles. The more color balanced shot looks like a pictures of candles, by not a picture by candles.

adbsgicom

Caspian, thanks for the vote of confidence in the initial shot. I processed this one and then looked at the original, and said, "Dang, that's ORANGE". Though, I think you are correct in that the image should be orange in cast, which is why I posed that question back to Swartzy and Co. about how much orange one should expect in there. Perhaps it is the natural cherry around that adds to the orange and that I had bounced some CTO'ed flash in there that kinda munged things up. I'm getting ready to pull down some shot of my daughter and her friend from tonight that are 100% candle-lit to see how that plays out.

Swartzy

You won't have to loose good color balance...shoot a white/grey card in that lighted settng...custom WB then go from there. You should have some warmer skin tones but personally, I've never been one to like a "cast" per se. You can have your cake and eat it too...a couple of simple layers and masks can give you both...nice warm skin tones (not overly cooked) and yellow candle flames.

Mitchell

The last one looks pretty good.

I struggle with these shots every year. The combination of candles and incandescents coupled with a bit of flash makes this a WB nightmare.

I shoot a grey card and work from there. Even so, it's a struggle because you don't want to lose the lovely glow from the candles!

Keep on trying!

adbsgicom

Mitchell wrote:

The last one looks pretty good.

I struggle with these shots every year. The combination of candles and incandescents coupled with a bit of flash makes this a WB nightmare.

I shoot a grey card and work from there. Even so, it's a struggle because you don't want to lose the lovely glow from the candles!

Keep on trying!

Looking forward to your installment this year!! Found your old thread with the 3-year evolution of image quality and your lovely children growing up....

I did 100% candle light last night, got some nice images from it but need to clean up the noise a bit from the 2500-3200 ISO. Nice thing is each night, a little lower ISO is possible

Mitchell

adbsgicom wrote:

Looking forward to your installment this year!! Found your old thread with the 3-year evolution of image quality and your lovely children growing up....

I did 100% candle light last night, got some nice images from it but need to clean up the noise a bit from the 2500-3200 ISO. Nice thing is each night, a little lower ISO is possible

I tried something different (for me) this year, but I'm not entirely happy with my results. These were taking with a snooted off camera SB800.





I'm waiting until Friday for my purely candlelit shot.

adbsgicom

Mitchell, you got the orange candles and natural skin tones that Swartzy was suggesting, so good on that count. It does feel a little off though, and this is where I guess personal taste falls heavily into it that the candles aren't contributing to the light at all. Still, a very nice picture and looking forward to your 9 candle-power image....

Mitchell

adbsgicom wrote:

Mitchell, you got the orange candles and natural skin tones that Swartzy was suggesting, so good on that count. It does feel a little off though, and this is where I guess personal taste falls heavily into it that the candles aren't contributing to the light at all. Still, a very nice picture and looking forward to your 9 candle-power image....

I think the snoot really helped keep the proper color on the candles.

Unfortunately, the lighting looks so unnatural to me. It's obvious that they are not lit by the candles. The shot just seems off.

Richard

Mitchell wrote:

Unfortunately, the lighting looks so unnatural to me. It's obvious that they are not lit by the candles. The shot just seems off.

The intensity of the light on the faces seems wrong. It might work if you had a little more ambient light.

Caspian

I was thinking the same thing as Richard. The snoot is a good idea. If you back off the flash a couple stops, the light might look more natural on their faces and you will pick up more ambient light. How did you make the snoot?

Swartzy

Hey Mitchell..try upping your ISO, and allow the ambient to register...try putting the snooted flash setting at say 1/32nd, underexpose ambient by 2 stops..if the flash is still ruling, then set the flash at 1/64, up the ISO or drag the shutter getting the ambient registering 1 1/3rd stops..this will give you the look you're after.

Mitchell

Swartzy wrote:

Hey Mitchell..try upping your ISO, and allow the ambient to register...try putting the snooted flash setting at say 1/32nd, underexpose ambient by 2 stops..if the flash is still ruling, then set the flash at 1/64, up the ISO or drag the shutter getting the ambient registering 1 1/3rd stops..this will give you the look you're after.

I purposely tried to keep the ambient down by not dragging the shutter. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to emulate a photo I had seen on another forum.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/hosting/showphoto.php?photo=68591&sort=1&cat=all&page=3

He definitely succeeded!!

ivar

Mitchell wrote:

Unfortunately, the lighting looks so unnatural to me. It's obvious that they are not lit by the candles. The shot just seems off.

I agree. I think it's going to be very hard to balance candle-light and flash. I've tried it before but never succeeded to a point where I was happy with it.

Andrew, I think the colors are still off a bit in the last one you posted, but I think that's definitely the best one so far

adbsgicom

I think I'm getting a hang of the image that works better in this case given the recurrent theme here.


Thank you to all the feedback, samples and goals here since in the end, as I look at this, I actually am more pleased with where this ended up. There is still some color there, but not overwhelming.

Elaine

I really like this last one! The color is still warm and the candles are prominent, but it looks natural and not too warm. My only nit would be that bright, little reflection (?) on the left side, straight out from her shoulder. It's competing with the candles for me, just a bit.

adbsgicom

Elaine wrote:

I really like this last one! The color is still warm and the candles are prominent, but it looks natural and not too warm. My only nit would be that bright, little reflection (?) on the left side, straight out from her shoulder. It's competing with the candles for me, just a bit.

Thanks. Didn't see that. Been obsessing so much on the skin tones and what started off as huge reflections in the glass and part of a ceiling fan in the upper right. Consider that specular highlight toast...

rainbow

I'm a little late to this discussion, but I did pull up a photo that is lit only by candle and perhaps a little from the campfire:



The orange glow is what gives it the mood. Maybe you had rejected this earlier, but I did want to post this for your consideration.

adbsgicom

rainbow wrote:

I'm a little late to this discussion, but I did pull up a photo that is lit only by candle and perhaps a little from the campfire:

The orange glow is what gives it the mood. Maybe you had rejected this earlier, but I did want to post this for your consideration.

Which is sort of where I started, though looking back, I think the original shot was in a no-man's land where it wasn't dark enough to feel candlelit, and it was just too bright orange as it was. I'm going back to the original and playing a bit more plus going to play some with a couple of shots that were 100% candle-lit.

-a

adbsgicom

This was from Wednesday night. In the end, the space was very cramped at a friend's house with about 6 different menorahs being lit, but I liked this crop of my daughter's friend. I opted to go very soft here, it seemed to work (let me know how wrong I am...). I'm sensing that the orange here works because of the rapid fall-off and lack of ambient. There is no question about the color of the light, and the glow seems right. C&C always appreciated.

rainbow

adbsgicom wrote:

This was from Wednesday night. In the end, the space was very cramped at a friend's house with about 6 different menorahs being lit, but I liked this crop of my daughter's friend. I opted to go very soft here, it seemed to work (let me know how wrong I am...). I'm sensing that the orange here works because of the rapid fall-off and lack of ambient. There is no question about the color of the light, and the glow seems right. C&C always appreciated.

Softness works -- not noticed at all as focus is on her gaze. Orange glow works really well.

What if you took the brightness down a shade? Not sure if this would be better or worse or if you tried it yet, but that would be something I would explore.

So, it does work. And it is an excellent capture with her gazing with child's engagement with the candles.

adbsgicom

rainbow wrote:

Softness works -- not noticed at all as focus is on her gaze. Orange glow works really well.

What if you took the brightness down a shade? Not sure if this would be better or worse or if you tried it yet, but that would be something I would explore.

So, it does work. And it is an excellent capture with her gazing with child's engagement with the candles.

Thank you.
I've been bumping it up and down since you suggested this, and can't full decide. Too far down and she loses all sense of a glow from the candles. So now I need to leave it at -5 (since I'm working on the TIFF now) in LR and see when I come back to the pair, which is more appealing.

lilmomma

adbsgicom wrote:

I'm sensing that the orange here works because of the rapid fall-off and lack of ambient.

yes! I like this!