I always get this pinkish tint when I shoot with my 30D and 580 indoors how do you guys deal with this, I'm learning as I go

Steve

where are you shooting? are you bouncing? what format you use? jpg or raw? whats your WB preset?

Set a custom white balance. It's easy, doesn't require anything exotic. Grab a sheet of paper out of your printer. Set your lens to MF, hold the sheet of paper in front of your lens so the spot meter circle covers it. Take the shot with your flash and room lighting that you will be shooting in. Set custom white balance.

Fixes it quite handily and gives you some practice so you're prepared for different lighting conditions.

Are you talking about a pinkish tint over the entire image, including white walls, etc? Or are you talking about a pinkish tint in just a person's skin?

Flash can sometimes bring out colors in a persons skin that usually aren't seen under normal lighting. Especially a powerful flash like the 580.

Sorry for being so Vague, I'm noticing it mostly in skin tones, especially Lighter skinned people.

Steve

If it is a skin tone issue and the WB in the rest of the photo seems accurate, I recommend (highly) trying Bibble Pro and installing Sean Puckett's "Gina" - Skin Tone Correction plugin. It allows you to adjust skin tones independantly of the rest of the photo.

On the other hand, I have never noticed this myself with indoor flash shots. Are you bouncing? Direct? Diffused?

One of those "are you sure it's plugged in" questions:

You aren't using the Portrait picture style, are you? The Portrait picture style is infamous for its pink-to-red skin tones when used with the default parameters. Reducing the saturation a notch or two and increasing the color tone a notch or two is said to make that picture style more usable.

Very true Doug, the DPP Portrait style is very odd, very pink. I would shoot a grey card shot so that I could use that to set the WB later in RAW.

I'm bouncing the flash using the Gary Fong Lightsphere 2 Cloud version diffuser, No hotspots great exposure except for the fact that they all look slightly cooked, however the darker complected people look great.

My picture style is set at standard with the sharpness cranked up to 4, everything else is set at 0.


Steve

Also while on the topic, make sure you boost your ISO when you're shooting flash indoors. It'll make the image look a heck of a lot better. I usually shoot a minimum of 800.

Using flash indoors is a matter of mixing the output of the flash with the available natural light. I try not to add more than two stops of light using flash. I always shoot manual mode on my body and use ETTL for most indoor subjects.

Color casts are often a product of what you bounce your flash off of, or the general coloration of the room. In my family room, we have furniture with the "Mission" type finish that's a reddish brown. The room is a beige/taupe color, so everything ends up somewhat warmed in images.

Is your monitor pretty accurate?

Post an example...it will help us zero in on what's going on.

I get the same and attribute it to mixed lighting. I plan on using a custom white balance next time, like the other poster mentioned.

Grey card and RAW

Lance Lee wrote:
Very true Doug, the DPP Portrait style is very odd, very pink. I would shoot a grey card shot so that I could use that to set the WB later in RAW.

I bet Portrait Style works great on oriental skin tones. This was a problem especially in the early days of digital.

Canon engineer, translated: "What problem? Those occidentals ARE pink"