Family Portraits - Using a flash - Custom White Balance?

[Adam Hicks]

Did that title make any sense? I'm shooting our family Christmas pictures, nothing major, but I'm curious about white balance. I'll shoot RAW, but I love getting things right the first time :)

I noticed that with two flashes set up (Master, Slave) I had one at 45 degrees full power off a bouncer, and then the on-camera flash had a Lumiquest pocket bouncer at 80/20 or 100% front. The images came out with a yellow tint to them from the ambient light (or perhaps the bounced walls.)

My question is this... should there be enough flash used so that it drowns out any ambient light tone, or should I still try and use my grey card to meter white balance even with the flash?

Any tidbits of info here are appreciated!

[OneManArmy]

I have a question for you actually; what's the difference in using a white card vs. a grey one? Thanks

[tim]

The manual says to use a white card, I don't know why you'd use grey, but then again there are lots of things I don't know.

[Adam Hicks]

It doesn't matter if you use a white or grey card, as long as it's 'tone' neutral. The benefit of using a grey card is that you can keep one card for both white balance AND exposure. An 18% grey card is really handy when shooting RAW and wanting a nice middle-of-the-road exposure. Especially helpful in tough contrast situations with a lot of white or black (shooting snow, 15 men in tuxes and one wedding dress, etc.) It took me a few tries to feel comfortable letting a piece of cardboard determine my exposures, but it's never let me down when used properly!

Adam

[tim]

That's interesting Adam, thanks. So much to learn...

[slin100]

Perhaps I'm begging the question, but you have to decide the effect you want. Do you want to balance the exposure with a mixture of flash and ambient light, or do you want the flash to function as the sole source of light?

The situation may dictate it for you. For example, if you have a low-enough ceiling and don't care or want ambient lighting to be a factor, then set the white balance according to the flash's color (via either a custom white balance or off a grey card) and bounce the light off the ceiling. OTOH, if ambient lighting is important (e.g. taking pictures in front of a lit christmas tree), then you may be better off using gels to color balance your flashes with ambient lighting. A CTO filter converts daylight to tungsten.