ColorChecker Password - Reddish cast

I just got a ColorCheck Passport and used it for the first time at a volleyball tournament. I usually use an Expodisc when shooting, and shoot in RAW. The lighting in the venue was actually pretty good. After setting the custom white balance, I took a picture of the ColorChecker Passport (the 2 colored panels) sitting in the middle of the court. I then shot as normal.

I use Lightroom 4 and the plugin for ColorChecker to create a profile, and then applied it to my images. They look to my eye like they now have a bit of a reddish cast vs. the custom WB that I set. Is this normal with ColorChecker, or am I doing something wrong. Other than the slight cast, I like the rest of what ColorChecker is doing for me.

Did you have the color checker laying on the floor facing the lights when you shot It?

If so, that orientation wouldn't take the bounced light from the court floors into account. If the floors were wood, the bounced light from the floors would have a red cast.

The solution would be to shoot the color checker at an angle next time so that is illuminated by both the lights and the bounced light off of the floor.

I have the passport, LR4 and all of my images look fine. When creating a profile this brightens the colors of the image, but does not adjust the WB. In order to get a proper WB in LR with the passport, you can either use the passport and do a custom WB in camera or take a pic of the passport under the location lighting and use the dropper in LR to select one of the gray squares.

The passport provides several gray squares that are for portraits or landscapes. These all have slight color adjustments so that you can add warmth to the image, such as skin tone.

doidinho wrote in post #15524625
Did you have the color checker laying on the floor facing the lights when you shot It?

If so, that orientation wouldn't take the bounced light from the court floors into account. If the floors were wood, the bounced light from the floors would have a red cast.

The solution would be to shoot the color checker at an angle next time so that is illuminated by both the lights and the bounced light off of the floor.

I did have one side laying on the floor and the other facing at a 30 degree angle up. So you are saying I should have stood it up so both were seeing reflected and direct light? It was hard to position it without some shadow on the color chips. The floor was a grey volleyball portable flooring, so not wood or red. There wasn't really anything red for it to reflect I don't think.

zerovision wrote in post #15524643
I have the passport, LR4 and all of my images look fine. When creating a profile this brightens the colors of the image, but does not adjust the WB. In order to get a proper WB in LR with the passport, you can either use the passport and do a custom WB in camera or take a pic of the passport under the location lighting and use the dropper in LR to select one of the gray squares.

The passport provides several gray squares that are for portraits or landscapes. These all have slight color adjustments so that you can add warmth to the image, such as skin tone.

OK, I totally was not looking at this correctly. I was thinking the profile would take into account and correct WB, but now I see what you are saying and not sure why I thought that. So if there is a red cast, then it was probably already there and exaggerated with the enhanced color. After looking back at the images today, I'm not seeing as much of a cast, so maybe it was the contrast from the uncorrected images that left me "seeing red". I'll attach an image as a reference. This still has the WB set by Expodisc. I'll try selecting some of the ColorChecker chips as alternative white balance.

Here's an image with the ColorChecker profile, and lens profiles applied, and Exposdisc WB. Other than that, the only adjustment is a very minor Clarity addition, and minor noise reduction. These are the least tweaked I've ever had to do indoor sports images.

5D3, 70-200 2.8 IS II, f/2.8, 1/640s, ISO 5000, RAW, Custom WB from Expodisc

Another issue that probably doesn't apply here is that many gyms/arenas use lights that continuously cycle through the color band. By the time you press the shutter, the WB has changed from what is was a second ago.

Bearmann wrote in post #15525137
Another issue that probably doesn't apply here is that many gyms/arenas use lights that continuously cycle through the color band. By the time you press the shutter, the WB has changed from what is was a second ago.

Yep, I'm well aware of that. This particular venue, Greater Richmond Convention Center, had very good lighting that didn't seem to show the usual intense cycling that is typical in a gym. It was also very bright, which was nice.

In all the arenas I have dealt with, even the ones with, what appears to be, really nice lighting, I have found that not every light fixture emits the same color cast as all the others consistently. This may have an affect on the using the ColorChecker unless it was placed at the exact same spot the image above shows.

Based on what I see, the volleyball itself looks good to me. The skin tones and floor, appear off to my eyes. What I normally do in this situation is take the color dropper and click on some of the areas of the floor that appear are gray. If this does not help, then I play around with the orange and red color sliders in LR to see if the skin tone looks a little better.

I wish my passport would fix it perfect everytime, but when it comes to arenas, I usually don't count on it, but instead, use it as a starting point and then tweek it.

Hope this helps.

zerovision, the skin tones on these girls are actually pretty close to the way they look in real life. Looking back at this image, if you look at the shadow under the player that is hitting the ball, there is some reddish cast in the shadow, but it isn't evident outside the shadow. I will fiddle around with WB a bit. When I started this thread I had in my head that ColorChecker's profile was superseding the WB adjustment, but now realize I had that all wrong. I've got a variety of ways to tweak the white balance so will try that now.

Thanks for all the helpful and quick responses.