Color is off in my indoor shots (long post)

jbswear

Okay, so I'm a new dSLR user. Canon's XTi is my camera. I've had it a whole 3 weeks or so.

So far, using it outside, I've had no troubles with the color of the shots. Today I tried shooting portraits indoors for the first time. Christmas day, all the family gathered, I'm there with my new toy, so of course everybody wanted shots with my camera.

I'm shooting and shooting and shooting like a fool. Posing here, posing there, walking around and taking lots of candid shots.

I tried different settings, but mainly using the Flash setting for the white balance, as I was using the 430EX flash. I was also playing with one of my Christmas gifts, a Quantary stand-alone flash that responds to my camera's flash to fill in. (Side note--I love this thing! I think I'll buy a coupla more!)

Most of the pics were taken on the Portrait setting, by accessing the menu, not the switch on the top of the camera.

The colors of the subjects were true; reds were red, blues were blue, etc. BUT, the walls and everything else had a noticeable red tinge. Everybody there (nobody really interested in pursuing photography--even more amature than me) loved the shots. A friend had received a photo printer today so I was using it to pass out pics to the family. But I wasn't satisfied, as I saw a definate flaw. Heck, the walls are painted "jute", which in my eyes is olive green, not red.

I've played with aperture and shutter settings, but these account for the amount of light hitting the sensor, not the way the processor reads the color. Unfortunately, most of the shooting today was on the "large" JPEG setting on the camera, as I wanted to be able to immediately print. Otherwise I shoot exclusively in RAW format.

Can any of you guys offer some advice on what settings for color to look at? I know this has been long-winded, but I want to make sure I explain as much of the instance as possible. What settings to I need to look at, and how to set them?

Thanks guys.

Brad

(Mods--I think this is the right forum. If not, kick me to the right one!)

pathfinder

When shooting flash indoors, the actual white Balance Temperature is a function of the amount of electronic flash lighting and the ambient tungsten, incandescent or fluorescent lighting.

What mode was the camera in Av, Manual, or Program? You will find the amount of ambient light used is different in each of these modes. Also, when walls have a strong color, they can strongly influence the white balance also. If your walls are green, your subjects will be lighted with greenish light. To correct that coloration, will require shifting the white balance to the magenta direction, to remove the greenish cast from your subjects.

It helps to have white ceilings and neutral walls. This is the colored wall I had to utilize last weekend - shooting in RAW, and using the white tones in her shirt, allowed me to set nice black and white points and balance the lighting for her face. JPGS would be really tough to deal with here - I know I was shooting RAW + jpgs. RAW saved me.



I think the walls were really a little more olive than this straight brown - the images were shifted to the magenta slightly - sounds just like yours, doesn't it??

I chose to shoot in Manual Mode with the flash in ETTL. My settings were ISO 400, 1/160th and f4. Nice soft lighting for flash.

By shooting in manual mode, the shutter speed does not vary and the aperture does not vary, so there is no variation in color balance form varying ambient lighting, from shot to shot. So once you have the color balance worked out for the first shot, the rest fall into place quickly.

jbswear

Thanks. Gonna have to try that out.

Boy oh boy, do I have a lot to learn about this camera. But it's fun!