Why do my pics come out so red?

JayClark79

Why does it seem my pics always have a red tint to them?? How can I offset this or correct this? :dunno

adbsgicom

Can you provide samples and what you are setting your camera settings to and what the lighting conditions are? If you are not using AWB, then you may have the WB off. If you are bouncing light off reddish surfaces, it will pick up red color (or whatever color you are bouncing off of).

In LR (or PS) you can shift the white balance on the yellow-blue or green-magenta spectrum. Sounds like you need to shift to the green some.

mehampson

Without seeing the problem, the most likely guess is your white balance is off. I assume, based on the gear you mention in your sig, that you're shooting RAW, so you'll be able to adjust that in DPP/Lightroom/Aperture to get it right.

If you're already doing that and can't seem to get the right white balance, you may need to gel your flashes. If you're mixing ambient with flash, especially indoors, you might be just be seeing mismatched color temps, and balancing for one could make the other appear too warm.

And of course, you may have a reddish tint to your monitor.

JayClark79

It is generally when im mixing flash indoors with ambient light.... I think it might be because my shutter is to low 1/25 - 1/50? To much ambient light?

adbsgicom

Looks like Michael wins for forecasting your issue. If you are counting on any of that room light to light your subjects, it has a very warm color (meaning very yellow). It is about 2300K. Your flash, in comparison is very blue at 5500K. So what this means is that to make what your flash lit (in this case her face) properly colored, the ambient will be very yellow/orange in comparison. To solve the issue, you gel your flash with a CTO (or CTS) gel to get the color temperatures to be more in line. From your RAW file, you can get any consistent color of light to produce the right color of skin. When you mix light color (temp), you end up with something being wrong.

Try this experiment. Shoot the same image on each of the WB values of your camera: tungsten, daylight, clouds and you will see color shift as you do this. So you can see what happens if you have things lit by variant sources.

JayClark79

thanks Andrew, where can I find these gels? are they a cover i can use over and over and over again... or is it like a roll of tape i cut to fit and discard of later?

Is any of this problem my shutter speed being on the slow side also?

adbsgicom

There have been a bunch of threads on gels, including one in this forum just recently. You can get them from B&H, Phoxle, your local camera store, or a sampler from a theatrical lighting store. I just got a sheet from B&H and cut to size. They are very reusable. The ones from Phoxle are much more expensive per square inch, but have a large convenience factor.

pathfinder

JayClark79 wrote:

thanks Andrew, where can I find these gels? are they a cover i can use over and over and over again... or is it like a roll of tape i cut to fit and discard of later?

Is any of this problem my shutter speed being on the slow side also?

Yes, the longer your shutter speed is open, the more ambient light pours into your picture. ANd hence it is warmer, than the light from your speedelight ( unless your strobe is gelled with an orange - CTO ish - gel )

Since your shutter speed has no significance on the flash exposure ( if your shutter speed is within the native synch speed ), the flash exposure is controlled by aperture and ISO, - try shortening your shutter speed and decreasing the amount of ambient light captured in your image.

If you match your speedlite with a 1/2 CTO gel or thereabouts, then there will be no difference in color temp of strobe light and ambient light, so the problem will no longer be present if you set your camera's Color Balance to Tungsten.

Most folks would still prefer to shoot at 1/125th or 1/160th I suspect, unless you have a particular reason to shoot at 1/60th.

You can find the gels at - http://www.mpex.com/browse.cfm/4,13760.html - along with other goods from the Strobist series.

I hope you are shooting in RAW - stick a MacBeth color checker in one of your frames, and use the next to white box to white balance on in your RAW converter and that will quickly correct your images. If you are shooting jpgs, shoot a true non-specular grey target, like a balancesmarter, and use the jpg to create a custom white balance for that shooting session.

adbsgicom

pathfinder wrote:

If you are shooting jpgs, shoot a true non-specular grey target, like a balancesmarter, and use the jpg to create a custom white balance for that shooting session.

If you are shooting jpeg, start shooting RAW. You won't be sorry.

JayClark79

adbsgicom wrote:

If you are shooting jpeg, start shooting RAW. You won't be sorry.

I am shooting RAW.... So i want a CTO gel and not a CTS? whats the difference in a 1/2 or a whole CTO?? Are they 2 different gels, or do i need 2 1/2's to make a 1 CTO?

pathfinder

1/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO, full CTO are increasing orange colored gels. "Tungsten" lighting can vary a fair amount , and you can used one of the different strengths of the CTOs to match your strobes light color better with the ambient tungsten lighting. A bit a cut and try involved sometimes. I favor 1/2 CTO but folks will vary about this, depending on how warm they want their image.

You can read about CTO gels here - http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101-using-gels-to-correct.html

Near the bottom of this link is a bit about CTS gels ( which are sometimes called Straw ), which some folks prefer to CTO gels for tungsten balancing. Not sure I agree entirely with the statement there, but this ain't rocket science with only one correct answer either.

Looks like a good source for gels - http://www.cinemagadgets.com/sheets-21x24-color-correction-sheets-c-153_174_150.html

adbsgicom

CTO vs. CTS (Orange vs. Straw) is a matter of asthetic. CTO is much more prevalent. CTO is slightly redder than CTS. 1/2-CTO and Full CTO are different gels, though in theory you could stack them. The gels are reasonably inexpensive, I think a 24x24 or 20x20 sheet was something like $6 from B&H. Several folks have noted that you can get a Rosco sample book from theatrical lighting companies, and that the samples are just the right size, and then you get all the fun, funky colors too.

mehampson

Rosco sells a pretty complete kit of gels now for ~$15 shipped:
http://www.amazon.com/Rosco-Strobist-Collection-Cinegel-Strobes/dp/B002SWIOOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1264084575&sr=8-1