This is not neccesarily a wedding post, but since all of you make a living shooting in dark churches other places I wanted to ask for advice. I shot a confirmation this weekend and posted a few below. I have no experience with adjusting white balance and was wondering if anyone in the group has any suggestions for white cards or any links to tutorials on manually adjusting WB. Thanks and all the help is appreciated.
I am sure you will get a lot of info that is much better than what I can share but since no one has responded I will jump in. I usually shoot anything white (wall, piece of paper, etc) and then set the WB to custom with that shot. Then shoot in RAW. I can usally get the WB looking great in about 10 seconds using LR.
What photo programs do you own? You can use a plain piece of matte photo paper, dial in +2 in exposure compensation, take a picture of it, then set the custom white balance in your camera. Or you can but a grey card. If you have lightroom, you can use the eyedropper tool to select a white somewhere in one of the pictures and sync all taken in the same space. Color temperature sliders are the easy way to do it, and layers/curves/colorchannel in photoshop is probably the best way.
Pinhead05 - Thanks for the tips.
Shane - I am currently using Photoshop CS3, but also have lightroom and I am attempting to learn how the software works. In order to use LR do I need to shoot in RAW or can I use the eyedropper tool with shots in JPEG?
bugspit wrote:
Pinhead05 - Thanks for the tips.
Shane - I am currently using Photoshop CS3, but also have lightroom and I am attempting to learn how the software works. In order to use LR do I need to shoot in RAW or can I use the eyedropper tool with shots in JPEG?
Works in jpeg too. Make sure to fine tune with the temp and tint sliders as needed, then select all photos taken in the same light, then hit sync settings--this should be the first thing you do to your photos when you open them. Good luck.
There is an eyedropper tool in PS3 too, in layers/new adjustment layer/curves/mode:color.
It is nice if you can get a decent white balance right out of the camera. I have used an "expodisc" to set a custom white balance in my camera and have been quite pleased with the results. They cost about $100, are very easy to use, and IMO are well worth it. In addition to using it often in churches, I use mine quite a bit in ice rinks where the lighting is often difficult, or at least for me it is. If you buy one to fit your widest diameter lens, it works well for all smaller ones too. Have a great Thanksgiving!!
ps eyedropper...jsut hit ctrl L (levels) select the midrange edropper and click on anythiing neutral. ie black/white or grey. You might try a few diff spots.
Dpp allows you to do this really quick and then paste the fix to all the shots from that lightiing scene. So does LR i believe.
quickest way...well quickest once you get used to it...is to set your wb by kelvin temp. Its pretty easy to dial in once you get the hang of it. If its mixed...its just difficult..you kind of have to pick your poison to match to...or just do a custom wb...takes seconds. Or if you dont have time just shoot raw and muck with it later. I dont like that option, I shoot jpegs...so i just try to get it right in camera
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+1 on the Expodisc but to be honest these shots look okay as is (except the last one is overexposed). Balancing 2500K lit shots to neutral is a mistake and will make everything look unpleasantly cold.
Expo disk all the way! Shooting a white card (or anything else white-ish) will get you close, but the camera only understands 18% gray for proper color and exposure. I shoot my expo disk and then custom white balance through most of my shooting and it gives amazing color.
The problem when not shooting in RAW is that the J-peg needs to be really close, otherwise it may be a bit hard to get the color back to where it needs to be. Even just using the pre-set white balances in the camera (open shade, tungsten and so on) is better than using auto white balance and it will get you fairly close.
