Newbie with WB and Noise issues-please Help!

[SaraFlutterBy]

I enjoy taking children's portraits, but I'm having issues with what I believe may be a number of things. I think the biggest are WB and noise. I have 3 soft boxes of varying sizes, a 30D canon and a fixed Canon 50mm lens. At this time I am not shooting in RAW format. As you can see, my picture is VERY yellow with a lot of noise. My shuuter speed was 1/400 sec, f-stop and aperature was f/4.5, ISO was 400. Any help would be much appreciated!:confused:153996

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[René Damkot]

Looks like you are using continuous lighting.
Set the white balance to 'tungsten' (lightbulb icon)
Your light meter is fooled by the white BG. Overexpose a stop or so. (Set the 'highlight warning' to 'on', and set the shutterspeed / aperture so that the white BG just doesn't 'blink')

[gbart]

I don't understand if you're using strobes with soft boxes, why is your shutter speed so fast. Usually your shutter sync speed is around 1/125 or 1/250. Also, is your white balance set to Auto or Flash? Although 400 ISO isn't extremely fast, there's no need to go above ISO 100 if you're using strobes. Lower ISOs produce less noise. How are you post processing your images? With Photoshop?

[gbart]

Good point Rene. It definitely looks like continuous lighting. When I saw "soft boxes" I immediately thought of strobes. My mistake.

[SaraFlutterBy]

Thanks for the comments. The first image is straight from the camera, the secoond is touched up with Photoshop. I am using continuous light with no strobes or added flash. The camera flash is turned off because I was getting shadows. I can try setting it to Tungsen. Within the menu of the camera, you can set the WB shift/BKT, Color Temp and Custom WB. I'm not sure what the color temp should be set at or how to Customize the WB. I guess I just need to keep playing. Will a lower of higher ISO help with the noise?

[SaraFlutterBy]

Ahhh!!!! I think I'm getting better results!! THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!! Now to get my little man to sit for another photo shoot!

1/125sec, F2.2, ISO 200
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Photoshot - auto levels only
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I pulled out the book and played with the camera. I understand what you mean with the highlighted warning now. If I only had enough time to read the book and ask enough questions to understand what it is telling me!

[tzalman]

A studio setup with fixed lighting is the ideal place to make a Custom WB. The tungsten preset will get you close but it is generic while the customized setting will be based on your actual lighting. It can be done very quickly and once it is done it will remain in the camera's memory until you change it and will always be good for those lights. Read your manual on how to do it, but basically it's as follows - photograph a sheet of white paper or even better a photographic grey card which is guaranteed to be a truly neutral grey. If you use a white paper, use Partial metering and don't use Exposure Compensation - the image should be grey. It's not neccessary that the paper fill the frame completely, but it is best if it occupies most of it. Now go to the Custom WB menu item. It will ask if you want to use the shot of the white paper, say yes. The camera will examine the color values in that shot and create the CWB. Really simple.

[SaraFlutterBy]

:D Thank you so much! I will give that a try. I read a little on the gray cards, but never purchased one. I wasn't really sure how it worked, but tinkering with the menu more got me to stumble on the Custom WB selection. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out!!

Have a great day!!! :)