Getting warmth feel while shooting christmas lights

[90blackcrx]

So my question is, when I'm shooting Christmas lights, rather it be a house, or a tree I can't seem to get the warmth that appears in real life. I'm using my grey card before the photo in that environment, but everything appears to just seem cold and blue. Any suggestions, tips you might have I'm all open. We have a few more weeks left of christmas light shooting.

[Wilt]

Use a lower color temp on the white balance, than to render the gray card neutral

[number six]

Agree with Wilt - you want warmer (redder) color balance.

I'm not one of those raw zealots, but this is a good reason to shoot raw. You can adjust color in DPP to your taste.


-js

[90blackcrx]

Use a lower color temp on the white balance, than to render the gray card neutral

Care to explain how or what this means before I google it ?

I shoot in raw so yeah I suppose that would be a good way to.

[Jon]

The Christmas lights are probably at around 2700-2800 Kelvin; set your WB to there, or at least to Tungsten, rather than using AWB (which Canon has said only covers the range of 3000-7000 K).

[Wilt]

Care to explain how or what this means before I google it ?

I shoot in raw so yeah I suppose that would be a good way to.

Daylight is nominally about 5500K color temp (depends upon time of day, clouds, etc.), incandescent is about 3200-3400K (depending upon whether photoflood or ordinary household bulb), CFL can run even lower (2700k, plus some color shift in the green-magenta axis) Choosing 5000K for the white balance, rather than the normaly using 5500K is 'using a lower color temp'.