White balance help/suggestions

[biglouis]

Tomorrow I have to take some pictures in a room which I have always found difficult because of the lighting. The room is lit by flourescent tubes and some natural light.

I have shot in this room before with my M8 and the pictures always have some yellow cast to them.

In the past, on the M8, I have selected AWB (doesn't really work that well), set the wb to Flourescent (slightly better) and tried manual white balance (pointed the camera at a white surface and set it manually). Mostly the shots come out with a sickly yellow cast.

In desperation I am thinking of using my SF24D. I bought this on a whim and have never used it before(!). Will this add the right colour temperature to the scene to combat the yellow cast?

Any other ideas would be gratefully received. I've tried to explain to the powers that be that it is unlikely that good picture can ever be taken in that room without some form of photographic lighting to combat the horrible effects of the flourescents (and now I come to think of it a sickly yellow fake beech topped conference table in the room - may be a coincidence).

I always shoot raw and my lenses all have uv/ir filters on them and are coded.

LouisB

[photolandscape]

Which version of the firmware are you using? V 1.201 is the latest and best for AWB, so if you're not using it, that would the first thing to consider.

[biglouis]

Originally Posted by photolandscape

Which version of the firmware are you using? V 1.201 is the latest and best for AWB, so if you're not using it, that would the first thing to consider.

Yes, should have added I am using the latest firmware and in fact have extolled the virtues of the AWB elsewhere in the forum but this is just one particular case where it seems to fail to work

[Jamie Roberts]

Originally Posted by biglouis

{Snipped}In desperation I am thinking of using my SF24D. I bought this on a whim and have never used it before(!). Will this add the right colour temperature to the scene to combat the yellow cast?

Any other ideas would be gratefully received. I've tried to explain to the powers that be that it is unlikely that good picture can ever be taken in that room without some form of photographic lighting to combat the horrible effects of the flourescents (and now I come to think of it a sickly yellow fake beech topped conference table in the room - may be a coincidence).

I always shoot raw and my lenses all have uv/ir filters on them and are coded.

LouisB

Louis,

Yes, the SB 24 will do the trick if it puts out enough light to overwhelm the ambient at your given f stop.

So here's the formula...to do this...

1) Select the aperture you'd like to have
2) Set the shutter to something fairly fast, like 1/125
3) Set the ISO slow enough so that at the aperture and shutter, your ambient is, say, two stops underexposed (or more, but not too much more, or all you'll see is flash).
4) Attach the flash and shoot.

Now, my problem with Leica flashes is they don't bounce, which is a true PITA. They should bounce, always, because nothing on the planet looks worse than someone illuminated by full-on teeny tiny light source.

So yes, the colour will be good, but the flash results spotty. I know you're not going to do this, probably, but a used Nikon SB 28 in AUTO mode with a bounce head would make all the difference in terms of quality of light (and for my money the Canon 580 EX v2 is the perfect match for the M8).

[morffin]

why not use a white card to get the right color?

take a test frame w/ a white card .... then use that frame in PS to get the correct temp.

[erl]

A secondary consideration might be to look at the RAW processor you are using. Maybe try a different one if you have access to an alternative.

[Pointcolville]

My daughter studies violin in a church basement with sickly flourescent lighting, yellow surfaces, windows to an alley and tunsten light spilling in. Correcting wb is like playing wack-a-mole - if you adjust one part of the frame everything else goes out of wack. You might try correcting different areas and then masking the layers in photoshop.

[Gareth2]

Great shot.

[ammitsboel]

Originally Posted by Pointcolville

My daughter studies violin in a church basement with sickly flourescent lighting, yellow surfaces, windows to an alley and tunsten light spilling in. Correcting wb is like playing wack-a-mole - if you adjust one part of the frame everything else goes out of wack. You might try correcting different areas and then masking the layers in photoshop.

I think you did good on the white balance, and the shot is very good too!
The photo looks very good to me, what did you use for the RAW convertion?
I assume it's a slower lens than the summilux? summicron?

Best Regards
Henrik

[Pointcolville]

Thanks for your positive comments. This was taken with a 50 summilux at f2, processed in Lightroom - one export to photoshop for foeground wb, a second export for background wb, layered and combined. It sounds painstaking but if there is no complex masking involved it is the work of a couple of minutes.

[ammitsboel]

Originally Posted by Pointcolville

Thanks for your positive comments. This was taken with a 50 summilux at f2, processed in Lightroom - one export to photoshop for foeground wb, a second export for background wb, layered and combined. It sounds painstaking but if there is no complex masking involved it is the work of a couple of minutes.

Sounds interesting.
Have you customized the camera calibration in Lightroom?

I like the sense of "contact" there is between her and us.
With my photos, I find things like this hard to show with C1, when it's there in the photo and Lightroom is able to show it.
It's very inconvenient because everything else looks better in C1, but not this parameter that I try to describe as power or energy.

/H

[Shootist]

Originally Posted by ammitsboel

Sounds interesting.
Have you customized the camera calibration in Lightroom?

I like the sense of "contact" there is between her and us.
With my photos, I find things like this hard to show with C1, when it's there in the photo and Lightroom is able to show it.
It's very inconvenient because everything else looks better in C1, but not this parameter that I try to describe as power or energy.

/H

One reason certain images look better in C1 over LR or ACR out of bridge/PS CS3 is by default C1 adds sharpening, contrast and noise reduction. Turn all that off in C1 and you come up with very similar images.
I just find C1 hard to use and the newest version of it, 4.1, does thing I do not like and doesn't give you the option of changing that thing.

[ammitsboel]

Originally Posted by Shootist

One reason certain images look better in C1 over LR or ACR out of bridge/PS CS3 is by default C1 adds sharpening, contrast and noise reduction. Turn all that off in C1 and you come up with very similar images.
I just find C1 hard to use and the newest version of it, 4.1, does thing I do not like and doesn't give you the option of changing that thing.

Let's not get too angry with C1 as it appears that many people like it for what it is.
You are correct that the default texture processing cleverly adds some "finesse", but my comment on the power or energy has something to do with how the converter interpolates and how the color profile is made and/or how complex it is, I think...? unless they are making a lot of processing elsewhere in the software?
It could be said that the converter makes people look dead.

/H

[Shootist]

I'm not angry at P1 or C1. I just don't see the need to learn a new program, C1 3.7.x, to a point that I know ACR/PS.
At first I noticed better color from C1 but after Leica straightened out the WB problems, I got filters for my lenses and ACR got more mature with the handling of Leica DNG files I now don't see the need to use C1. I do have C1 installed on my secondary PC and I would use it If I felt the need to. I just haven't in at least 6+ months.