Is this a white balance or lighting issue.?

I am getting a redish/orange tint in some pics.

The pic below was shot with a 17-85 and a 580+stofen. It's not the fastest lens, so I was curious if this was a low light issue or white balance issue? White balance was set to auto.

I suppose I could have taken a raw photo and played with the white balance in post editing to find out if white balance was the issue. Only reason I ask about the white balance was because of warm incandescent lighting in the home and the use of the flash and ambient light coming through some large windows in this pic??

I am going to experiment a bit, but curious if there was anything feedback and any tips to play around with.


Thanks.

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The answer to the thread's question is: probably a bit of both.

First off, there's a significant underexposure to the whole shot.

In addition, the white balance setting of the camera doesn't match the light source.

There's another problem, though, and that is the mix of lighting types. When shooting using flash in an incandescent-lit environment, it's best to use a gel over the flash to give the light from the flash similar characteristics to the incandescent light. The only other truly acceptable option is to overpower the incandescent light with your flash.

Hi Skip,

My knowledge and experience lacking. Here is a question which may be too vague, however here it goes.

Given the circumstance in which the photo was taken, what could have been done differently at that time to get it looking better.

WB setting? Exposure? May seem a little basic, however I rely on the exposure scale in the viewfinder, and as an rookie I tend to trust the camera's light meter because the skills lack, then I get red looking photos.

I also have the flash on basically the auto mode too pointed at 45 deg. Is that a contributor?

There are some papers on the forum about exposure and lighting I will have to read for sure.

Thanks,
Vic

The best thing to do at the time would have been to put your camera in M and set your shutter speed to 1/200 and ISO to about 200 or so, and your flash to about +2/3. This would have helped you overpower the ambient light and all but eliminating the orange tint to the images. It also would have made your image sharper.

You problem is that your flash exposure pretty much matched or was less than your ambient exposure, which means that it is impossible to get a correct white balance, since you have nearly equal amounts of light form two different temperature light sources.

The only way to get a proper white balance would be to gel your flash with a CTO gel to match the color temp of the ambient as Skip suggested, or to overpower the ambient with your flash as I said earlier.


Also, I'd recommend ditching the sto-fen and pointing your flash up and/or behind you. This website is a great resource:
http://planetneil.com …h-photography-techniques/

Thanks for the feedback..I have some reading to do and maybe some playing around with the flash and gels when I get a little more informed.

Thanks