Anyone give some lighting advice...

[ArseWithClass]

Hi guys & girls...

Ive noticed I get a cream colour against the white on my background a lot of time... basically Im thinking either the lights are in the wrong place or the lights are flashing early or late than the flash on the camera.

Any ideas?

thanks in advance

[thebes]

Is your monitor calibrated?
How are you white balancing your camera? Auto is often off depending upon the individual shot, though this is less of an issue if you shoot RAW and correct color in post.

Lights in the wrong place should not cause a color cast. An unbalanced monitor might very well show the wrong colors, and if you correct with it (as I found out earlier this year), you can make things look downright bizarre.

If the flash was not synced right, you'd likely get uneven lighting with a band across the frame where the shutter was partly closed. Or else you'd just not get any light from the unsynced strobes.

Are you shooting with both hot lights and flash at the same time? If this is the case, you need to balance the light sources to each other, most often by putting a corrective gel over your flash-head to match (say) tungsten hot-lights.

Hope this helps.

[ArseWithClass]

Bes, thx for your interest & help...

Ok.. I have my camera with flash, normally set to auto as it takes an good pic but I was going to start using raw set on AV... is this a good choice?

I have 2 lights either side with 200watt tubes in each... I try to set these as far apart as possible>>> is it a good idea to get one behind the subject that I am shooting?

[thebes]

btw, its Thebes, one word, like the ancient cities.

I don't know what your Canon raw settings are.

I imagine if they are 200 watt tubes that they are tungsten bulbs. Are they from a department store, or a photo store? Normally good photo tungstens are 3200K and consumer light bulbs are 2800-2900K. Your flash is probably about 5500K, which is about the same as daylight. Your light bulbs look very yellow or amber when compared to a 5500K light source. The correct action is to place a corrective gel onto your flash, this will look yellowish and will reduce the flash power considerably, but then the auto white balance on your camera will (probably) render the color properly.

You MUST shoot with light sources that are color balanced to each other. You can put the right gel filter on one source or the other. If you do not, there is no good way to remove the color cast that is created.

So you know, with my video, I would consider 400 watts total of tungsten bulbs to be inadequate, unless the lights were each about a meter from the model. I doubt they are that close. I use the equivalent of 2000 watts to light half of a medium sized living room. This would also be enough light that I just could barely shoot without flash using my still camera, though fast motion would blur... on my video camera it is just enough I do not need to use "gain" most of the time.

[ArseWithClass]

I shall go into a photo shop tomorrow to sort bulbs out...

I think this is a good start. Cheers Bez for your kind interest.

[papagmp]

Originally Posted by thebes

btw, its Thebes, one word, like the ancient cities.

I don't know what your Canon raw settings are.

I imagine if they are 200 watt tubes that they are tungsten bulbs. Are they from a department store, or a photo store? Normally good photo tungstens are 3200K and consumer light bulbs are 2800-2900K. Your flash is probably about 5500K, which is about the same as daylight. Your light bulbs look very yellow or amber when compared to a 5500K light source. The correct action is to place a corrective gel onto your flash, this will look yellowish and will reduce the flash power considerably, but then the auto white balance on your camera will (probably) render the color properly.

You MUST shoot with light sources that are color balanced to each other. You can put the right gel filter on one source or the other. If you do not, there is no good way to remove the color cast that is created.

So you know, with my video, I would consider 400 watts total of tungsten bulbs to be inadequate, unless the lights were each about a meter from the model. I doubt they are that close. I use the equivalent of 2000 watts to light half of a medium sized living room. This would also be enough light that I just could barely shoot without flash using my still camera, though fast motion would blur... on my video camera it is just enough I do not need to use "gain" most of the time.

That was my guess - one way to tell quickly is to turn off all the lights and use just flash - then turn on the lights and see what you get.

One reason I like the walls of my studio to be black - no reflect light from stray sources.

BTW - I get all of my bulbs from a bulb store - not the camera store. I save a bundle and I can get just about any type bulb in any color temp that I need - 2400K to 6500K

[papagmp]

Almost forgot - done correctly mixing of color temps can give a very natural effect - like the mix of sunlight coming through the window and the warm light from a reading lamp.

[RevengeBucks_Monica]

I agree that it's probably the other light bulbs. All light casts a color. Regular light bulbs that you would put into a lamp in your house cast a warm orange or yellow hue. Fluorescents cast a greenish hue, and sunlight is actually quite blue (so is the light from a camera flash). This is the reason there is a "white balance" setting on a camera. You need to tell the camera what kind of light you are shooting in so it can make the whites look white.

SO, if you are using your flash (blue) and regular lamp type bulbs as well (yellow), you've got two colors to compensate for, and your camera can't really compensate for both.

SPAM bot! ......