Suggestions From The Pros

I have a wedding coming up in the same location that this picture was taken. It's an old opera house, and the stage lighting is set up for plays and theatrical productions. I had a HUGE problem as you can see with red cast, from the lights and the huge red curtain at my last wedding there (luckily, it wasn't paid and I wasn't the main photog!). What would you do to combat this problem? Would a custom WB help/fix the problem?

Looks like you've blown the red channel at least - try pulling the exposure back a bit and see if you can't recover some of those facial highlights. Did you shoot RAW?

Maybe with the RAW file you could do something by pulling back

If all else fails, go B&W

I'm not really looking to fix this image so much as to prevent it in my next shoot there. I do have it in RAW - I'd have to figure out which file it is, but I'd really like to avoid the PP nightmare associated with this pic in the first place. I actually did convert it to B/W and that helped A LOT, but I imagine my next wedding couple will want at least a few formals in color. Again, this is a totally untouched (and I know, crooked) picture.

Custom WB would definitely help in this kind of situation. Since you have the raw file, the bride's dress would give you a great start on WB, but as you say you'd have to PP every file. For the next one, try bringing a gray card, or even a piece of white paper, and shoot it close up under the lighting. (I like to shoot out of focus, so that small variations get averaged out.) Set your WB, and you'll at least be a lot closer.

No EXIF attached so I can't tell the camera setting, but looks like more ambient light than flash was record. I would try raise the shutter speed a bit and up the flash power, that would eliminate lots of reflection off the red curtain.

Overpower ambient light or use custom white balance. Overpowering ambient will give you better results.

I had this problem at my first wedding, even though I shot RAW there's not a heck of a lot you can do. Stage lighting's tough, the lesson is not to use it.

It really shouldn't be a problem even if you use all stage lighting. Theatrical lighting is usually set to 3200 or 3400K. Set your WB to 3200 and tweak in PS if necessary.

If you use flash combined with the stage lighting, be sure to use a 1/2 CTO filter over the flash to lower the K value to 3200.

Yeah in theory it's fine, in practice not so much. Make sure you set your camera to Tungsten WB, as that will make a difference to the histogram.

I shoot at theaters all the time, having trouble, but have adjusted. I also shoot in RAW and take the temperature down afterwards to match flesh tones. The lights from above is the main problem. It would be better to set up a couple of flashes off camera and turn down the theater's lights and go with the PWII's. Sometimes that cancels out the red more. I do use a dark red backdrop and with front lights, you don't get that awful overhead bad lighting. Next time, turn down the lights and use your own. That is the best way to set this kind of portrait out.

Custom white balance would help, overpowering the stage lights would help too. In addition to WB it looks like you have a bunch more light on the right as the foreheads of the men are blown.

I have used a CTO gel quite successfully in this type of situation.

While it would be nicer to try with a RAW file, I very hastily simply adjusted color balance, then reduced the red channel, to produce this...

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

Wilt wrote in post #6437599
While it would be nicer to try with a RAW file, I very hastily simply adjusted color balance, then reduced the red channel, to produce this...

Nice fix but how would you suggest he not have this problem during his next shoot there?

Titus213 wrote in post #6437768
Nice fix but how would you suggest he not have this problem during his next shoot there?

As was suggested, turn down the theater lights with the gels, and/or overpower it via flash and a faster shutter speed and lower ISO and smaller aperture.