I am defeated

I need a lot of help!!!! Anybody out here know how to take pictures of Christmas lights. For the life of me, I can not get the correct white balance or settings. I feel like everything is working against me. Wind, LED lights, street lights, incandescent lights, you name it. Here's an example. Any help on settings would be great. Not much out there for help. I've tried using tungsten but didn't seem to solve the problem.

Did you try an HDR? The trouble is that you have a whole lot of different light temperatures in one scene. I'd start with using a WB of incandescent then shoot several exposures for an HDR.

My example is HDR +3 to -3 EV and this was AWB. There is a street light right above me. Is this actually when regardless of technology, you can never get a good picture?

WB has been something I've had to spend hours trying to learn and understand. Given the different color temps, achieving a well-balanced shot will be difficult, especially given that you can't really control the lighting. I'm no expert so maybe someone has a better answer, but in my mind, I would handle this in post and use gradiant filters to adjust different areas of the photo accordingly. I've not really done any HDR work so I can't comment on that.

Shooting incandescent with LEDs is tough, but what is really affecting this shot is the street light behind right flooding your image with that beautiful NJ spray on tan orange color.

A well thrown rock or high speed projectile could easily take out the street light. I think I would shoot it earlier in the night. I would like to see some clouds/sky for some depth and to define where your roof ends and sky begins. I would try to shoot before teh street light comes on or at least when it is not the dominant light source.

Obviously crop out the neighbors. Moving to a uniform type of lighting for the future may help. Take more close up shots and different angles.

I would shoot RAW and adjust the lighting in post. Worst case, I would convert it to black and white. Beyond my PP skills, white balance bracket and HDR or layer it.

Street lights is a reason most of Christmas lights are shot near sunset, when it is still light enough out that the street lights don't interfere, but you don't get the black background, it will be more blue.

Perhaps using Lightroom or PS and using a brush with a different WB to make the foreground cooler?

RAW and LR to the rescue.

^^ He needs two WBs and layers in CS, something he may not know how to do.

mike3767 wrote in post #16550850
I need a lot of help!!!! Anybody out here know how to take pictures of Christmas lights. For the life of me, I can not get the correct white balance or settings. I feel like everything is working against me. Wind, LED lights, street lights, incandescent lights, you name it. Here's an example. Any help on settings would be great. Not much out there for help. I've tried using tungsten but didn't seem to solve the problem.

Hang in there Mike!
A few tips that might be of help here:
http://strobist.blogsp​ot.ca …aph-christmas-lights.html

What you need are cooperative homeowners who turn their lights on before it's dark enough for the streetlights to come on a jack everything up with their deathly, orange ooze.

Snydremark wrote in post #16551258
What you need are cooperative homeowners who turn their lights on before it's dark enough for the streetlights to come on a jack everything up with their deathly, orange ooze.

^^^This!...actually, that's one of the main suggestions I think that would be of help - try and shoot earlier so as to give a little seperation of the roof structure from the sky, as well as a bit of definition in the sky.

Oh, and it wasn't said earlier, but don't give up, OP; while it may not be an outcome you're looking for, your original photo looks pretty good given the lighting issues you're dealing with. You're certainly on the right path, and some of the stuff here may help you get to where you're trying to go.

I appreciate all the help!!!!! I didn't even think of shooting right after sunset. I'd love to throw rocks at them, because it seems like every house I do, has one in there front yard. I never noticed street lights until now. In PP, reducing contrast helps a little but when you give in one area, it seems as though it takes in another and PP isn't my strongest. I'm shooting a bunch of homes and neighborhood entrances for a friend who's in the business of decorating. I probably shouldn't have waited until the 23rd of December to start shooting the 20 places and now even better thinking about hitting the half hour around sunset. Again, appreciate all the help. With out this website, I wouldn't even know how to turn my camera on!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

FarmerTed1971 wrote in post #16551171
RAW and LR to the rescue.

but no explanation of how they come to the rescue!

Too much driveway showing. Crop it tighter like this. I duplicated the image, dropped the saturation on the bottom layer and then masked the top layer and painted in the driveway with 50% gray. Then I adjusted the WB and sharpened.

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