Colour Balance Help Please

[rodevans]

After all the help everyone gave me I have started to get some better results - thanks for everything.

On my last session I was photographing a young lady to try to get some shots for her portfolio. She wanted some plain portraits and general full length shots for catalogs and so on. We selected a white background.

Studio lights were used both with white umbrellas. I set the WB to Flash. Exposure was f9.5 and I as using the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens. The resulting shot is at www.rod-evans.co.uk/crw_0365.htm.

I used BreezeBrowswer to down load and left all setting ' as shot'. It was covnerted to html inthe same way.

I feel the shot has a yellow cast... help please. Were my settings wrong - WB or exposure? What can I do in photoshop to remove the cast?

Help please - thank you!!

Rod

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Rod,

Have you tried assigning a D30 profile as the image is loaded into Photoshop? I find this helps gives consistency.

Were you shooting raw? This gives more flexibility to adjust the image afterwards.

Roger

[Gomez Photography]

Make a custom WB using a 18% gray card ,not a wite card. Be sure to have the ISO settings right. 100 on light meter if camera is set on 100. Then take a McBeth color chart and shoot it next frame. I like to use icorrect and ColoCircut Q to create curves for the light setting.
http://www.picto.com/icorrect/default.htm
You will love this program. Good luck, Michael

[Gary]

Rod -

>>

If by studio lights you mean any kind of tungsten (continuous) lighting, that would explain the yellow cast. It's the same result as using daylight slide film in a tungsten lit situation, everything's yellow...

I get a reasonably good color balance with the D30 and tungsten lighting using the tungsten WB setting, but a custom white balance would be the best, I would think.

[rodevans]

Gary,

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the confusion.

I used studio flash not tungsten lighting. I think I may have over exposed slightly and this may have been the cause of some shifting of the colour.

Rod

[newbie7]

Rod,

I like your website. I am new to this. I'm especially interested is discovering how you got the lighting look on "Maria", bottom left of your/her thumbnails. This look is very close to what I'm looking for but haven't been able to achieve. I like the fade out from her bottom lip down. My ultimate goal will be to have the hair, eye area, nose, lips in total perfect focus but everything else in a fade out white, barely seeing the outlines of the face.

Newbie

[rodevans]

Newbie

Thanks for your comments and kind words!

That particular image is actually from film... Ilford Delta 100 printed on a variable contrast fibre paper scanned and lifted as an image for the web site. I made no changes to the images after scanning so what you see is what is on the actual print.

When I talked with Maria about what she wanted and I decided to go for high key lighting. This required the lighting to be set quite bright with two lights 45 degrees either side of her raised to about 6 feet. Thebackdrop was a white paper roll a bout 10 feet high... curved behind her all the way to give an even reflection.. and one small hair light

Exposure was 1/90th f11 and I used a soft focus filter. When I printed... I exposed long enough to get good detail in the hair and eyes and reduced the exposure and contrast from the rest of the face....

the high key lighting softens her features and, with the uses of harder printing on the eyes and hair helps makes the image more attractive (in my opinion).

Maria liked it anyway...!!!

DOes that help you at all?

If not feel free to talk to me here or email ...

thanks

rod

[rojoyinc]

I use sunlight/outdoor WB, I shoot in raw and when necessary I use white point in breeze browser to adjust color. I then tweak color to exact taste in pshop.
It's rare that I can shoot with the D30 in any WB setting and get color that doesn't need some adjustment after the fact.

Using daylight wb also allows the camera to go indoors and outdoors without changing anything other than "M" to "P" then back again as I got back indoors. I don't like messing with equipment when working with people.

I've also found that my D30 LCD isn't displaying color the same as what I see on my monitor. (which I calibrated to work with my lab's printing machines). So I have to pretty much ignore the color I see in review and figure it will be correct where it counts.