Would a flash gel help?

I recently took some pictures of a banquet in a dimly lit (incandescent light) hotel ballroom. In order that the background wouldn't be totally dark, I used ISO1600 on most of the shots where I knew the background would be part of the picture, such as shooting a picture of people seated at a table in the middle of the ballroom. I tried keeping the shutter at about 1/60 sec.

I noticed that the color of the flash and the color of the background are very different. Even after correcting the white balance for the foreground, the background is still very yellow.

My question is: Would a flash gel help to keep the background and foreground colors similar or is there a better way to shoot this situation?

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I can't believe you didn't blow highlights, and you still have so many plugged shadows with those settings. Dimly lit is an understatement

I've never used a gel so I'm not sure where to direct you in their useage, but I can help with the pp after the fact. I did a very quick edit by duplicating the layer, color correcting for the areas outside the flash zone, and blending the layers with a mask. I did a rough here, but you would reduce the opacity of the mask brush as you got closer to the flash zone. Otherwise you'll get whites turning a bit blue at the transition points like I have here.

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The short answer to your question is "Yes". If you choose the gel to match the ambient light, then you can use the camera white balance setting that matches your overall light. The flash is very high color temp (white/blue), the ambient light low temp. If you lower the color temp of the flash, then you will even the lighting in your image and make the WB correction more uniform. Even if you shoot RAW, the fact that there are 2 different color temps in the same image make for a problem in post.

LD's post processing assumes some things about the color of objects in the background and also a distinctly separated foreground (flash light) and background (ambient light), which is probably okay most of the time. But if you had a bunch of shots to correct like this, that processing may be time consuming.

Kirk

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'll try using an ambient colored gel next time. For me, taking pictures in a dimly lit hotel ball room has been difficult. Not only is using a flash difficult because you cannot bounce, trying to match the flash and ambient light is also difficult.

John E wrote in post #5465415
Thanks for the advice, guys. I'll try using an ambient colored gel next time. For me, taking pictures in a dimly lit hotel ball room has been difficult. Not only is using a flash difficult because you cannot bounce, trying to match the flash and ambient light is also difficult.

Why can't you bounce?

LeuceDeuce wrote in post #5465641
Why can't you bounce?

I can't use bounce because the ceilings are too high and the walls are too far away. At least that is what I thought. Am I wrong? Is bounce effective in a large ballroom

Get a CTO and set your camera to tungsten and you should be good to go.

You can still bounce in a ballroom:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=466874

cdifoto wrote in post #5470128
Get a CTO and set your camera to tungsten and you should be good to go.

You can still bounce in a ballroom:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=466874

Whats a CTO??

CTO stands for Color Temperature Orange.

cdifoto wrote in post #5470535
CTO stands for Color Temperature Orange.

Is that a made up acronym??

Yep. Someone made it up at some point in time, but it wasn't me.

Here you go, JohnE:

http://strobist.blogsp​ot.com …gelling-for-tungsten.html

John E wrote in post #5470085
I can't use bounce because the ceilings are too high and the walls are too far away. At least that is what I thought. Am I wrong? Is bounce effective in a large ballroom

Here's a great thread by Curtis N about that:

https://photography-on-the.net …php?p=4893926#p​ost4893926

I used bounced flash at a recent ballroom competition (hotel ballroom) and the results were great.

John E wrote in post #5470085
I can't use bounce because the ceilings are too high and the walls are too far away. At least that is what I thought. Am I wrong? Is bounce effective in a large ballroom

set your flash to full power and bounce away, it can be done with very high ceilings even!

Make sure the ceiling is a fairly nutural colour though or things may get even more complicated.