I've been thinking about buying some ABs lights and have been reading a lot about them. I am close to buying it but I only have one concerns with the lights. The ABs are known to have bad color shift and a lot of people talk about it on the internet. But the thing is I have yet to seen any hard examples of the shift.
For a few dollars more...okay, quite a few dollars more...you could get Einsteins instead of Alien Bees, and they have a mode that keeps color quite consistant across the power range.
Color shift isn't restricted to ABs, of course. Many models of flash, particularly in the lower-priced bracket, have the same issue.
Most of that color shift--and as BrianO mentioned, it's not limited to Alien Bees--occurs in the area less than 1/4 power where most other brands at that price point don't even go. If you stay at or above 1/4 power, you won't be bothered by it.
Since alienbees sells more units, there are more reports of color shifting in alienbees lights. almost all strobes exhibit color shifting unless they are IBGT controlled.
Einstein (my test) Note that there is no visible color shift with PCB stating a +/- 50 degree variance. This is the just one of the strengths of the einstein. Another is the super fast flash duration. http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h120/c2thew/einstein.jpg
I could have shot the einstein at minimum power and achieved a proper exposure at f/1.4 but I had too much ambient light affecting the color temperature. Shooting with the einstein; I could use f/1.4 - f/35 when the strobe was approximately 3 feet from the subject.
Camera settings: canon 50d, 50mm 1.4, iso 100, 1/125 shutter, white balance kelvin: 5500, triggered with a speedlite on minimum power pointed away from the subject. Light meter used was a sekonic l358
I have four AB800s and have not found color shift of the lights to be a problem because I always set Custom WB off a gray card AFTER setting the lights and determining exposure.
A bigger source color problems are difference in color temp resulting from unmatched modifiers. For example if umbrellas, SB, Dish and standard reflectors/grids for hair light are used together they will all have different color temps and create color casts in the photo depending how WB is set.
I've baseline tested my modifiers by setting Custom WB to my SB (I have three PhotoFlex Mulitdome Q39 in Lg, Med, Sm) then without changing power or WB mount the others which by comparison shows me the different in temp visually. For example here are tests comparing my SB with the AB 22" Dish when I received it back in 2004.... http://super.nova.org/TP/MedSB_DishCompare.jpg
On top the camera / light power settings are unchanged. On the bottom are key light only with the WB and exposure are both adjusted to compare the difference in light character. I shoot in a small space with light walls so the dish generated more spill fill... http://super.nova.org/TP/SBvDish/SetUpSB_BD.jpg
About the same time I switched from using reflector+metal grid to the small egg crated gridded SB for hair light because of the different in color temp and specularity and I was also doing a comparison test of them in the same test session.
To quantify the shift in K°, I set WB via K Temp mode in camera until the card values were as close to R=G=B as I could get on the SB, switched modifiers and again adjusted for R=G=B, using the camera WB in K° mode like a color meter. I found about a 500-600 K° difference between reflector and SB. So when using direct light for accent or on the background to match it to the SB in the foreground I just add a straw gel over the light, warming it about 600° and matching the two.
A tangental note: Note in the test how the different in shadow tone and specularity in the highlights affect the impression of "hard" and "soft" in the lighting. The dish due to its bigger foot print and more spill fill creates lighter "softer" looking shadow clues, but at the same time creates more specular "harder" looking highlight clues. This test was one of the things that got me thinking about the perceptual effects those clues create and better understand how small speedlight modifiers work, mostly by spill fill, to create the illusion of "soft" but how it doesn't work well unless the specular reflections are moved up on the cheekbones with a bracket.
It depended on the type of film used. Back in the day shooting 'chromes a box of cc filters and color meter was for the master photographer what a good set of knives and accurate thermometer are to a master chef. But when I moved to the reproduction side I discover there are workarounds. Most reproduction scanning was done from duplicate transparencies which were enlarged and could be color / exposure corrected like a print.
Where today people will "nuke" white background for a dropout what was done back in the day for catalog work was to dupe the original 'chrome to the size needed in the catalog — making necessary color / exposure corrections — on a Kodak color dupe film which had an emulsion layer that could be peeled off like an Avery label. If a page had 12 images they would be outlined with an x-acto knife, placed in solution with the cut-out floated off the dupe and onto a page-size or 2-page printer (imposed) spread in position. So instead of 12 separations with an mix bag of color / exposure two pages could be scanned at once, with color that matched exactly to each other and the clothing, in position and not requiring the normal manual layout. It was more complicated on the front end, but saved time and money on the back end, and made the final result more consistent. It required a high degree of craftsmanship and technical expertise — the things I learned while others were learning to "feel the light" at the Art Center
Color negative? The lab sorted things out when making the prints: about the only way to screw up with color negative is underexposing the shadows. Since the DR of the film is about two stops longer than the color paper if you overexposed by a stop you cover the bases. That's why metering "to the middle" off an 18% gray card worked so well.
Also back in the day lighting equipment wasn't mixed and matched as much as it it to day for the simple reason there were fewer modification options. Transitioning from fresnels used for B&W the early color practitioner would often just use the standard reflector and "feather" the light, aiming it completely in front/behind the head (depending on the desire for a darker/lighter background backing the soft edge of the light into the face vs. aiming the center at the tip of the nose. If they used any modifiers they more often than not were identical umbrellas.
Softboxes pretty eliminated the need to feather (deep ones don't have much of feathered footprint) and the knowledge how to use the technique. Like manual focus there are one, maybe two generations of photographers who never used feathering and don't even know what the term means. It is still is effective with umbrellas —which are brighter / more collimated in the center— and a dish with a center plate like the one shown which have a dead zone in the middle when used close, which is ideal for close in butterfly full face view to make the closer forehead darker than the eyes and mouth.
Thanks c2thew, for the examples. Honestly I don't see much difference in color temp besides the image on the far right which is more warm/redish. It seems more over exposed as well too.
cgardner, I am aware that a modifier will change the temp of ANY lights. Do you have examples the same modifier at different power level?
saelee wrote:
Thanks c2thew, for the examples. Honestly I don't see much difference in color temp besides the image on the far right which is more warm/redish.
the warm/reddish is the color shift you were looking for. This occurs with the alienbees when lowered to minimum power. Alot of strobes shift when they are voltage regulated however alienbees seems to be much more noticeable. Einsteins practically don't shift which is why they are highly recommended based on price/value.
RDKirk wrote:
Funny, this wasn't considered so much of an issue with film...when we couldn't even do much about it.
hondageek wrote:
I think that lots of things didn't used to be an issue. Take the Internet out of the equation and lots of things now wouldn't be an issue.
The "good ol' days" weren't always as rosy as we remember. Sure, we didn't worry much about varying color temps when shooting negatives; we picked the right emulsion and then let the printer make any needed corrections. When shooting chromes, though, we used quite a few different grades of gels to match the lights as closely to each other as we could.
And while we didn't have the Internet on which to have endless debates about it, we did sit around the studio chewing the fat, and the magazines had articles about it that were then debated in letters to the editors.
So this "new trend" isn't really anything new at all.
BrianO wrote:
The "good ol' days" weren't always as rosy as we remember. Sure, we didn't worry much about varying color temps when shooting negatives; we picked the right emulsion and then let the printer make any needed corrections. When shooting chromes, though, we used quite a few different grades of gels to match the lights as closely to each other as we could.
And while we didn't have the Internet on which to have endless debates about it, we did sit around the studio chewing the fat, and the magazines had articles about it that were then debated in letters to the editors.
So this "new trend" isn't really anything new at all....Show more →
This level of anguish at the amateur level is new--and remember that even a lot of amateurs were shooting non-pro Kodachrome. Just a couple of filters and they were good to go. For that matter, not many professionals outside the commercial realm did more than that. Wildlife and sports shooters weren't fooling with gel packs, nor were Nat Geo folks out in the jungle.
I was printing my own color negatives in the 70s, so yes, I was concerned about it at the printing stage, and without a color analyzer it was both costly and time consuming to get even a single corrected print. However, shooting digital raw today is "analogous" to that...yet there is still all this angst even though the solution is so very much easier to apply.
Never tested color shift with power because I never had a problem with it. Aware of how strobes vary I bought more power than needed in my space so I could keep them in the middle of their power band most of the time and set wb after setting power.
RDKirk wrote:
I was printing my own color negatives in the 70s, so yes, I was concerned about it at the printing stage, and without a color analyzer it was both costly and time consuming to get even a single corrected print. However, shooting digital raw today is "analogous" to that...yet there is still all this angst even though the solution is so very much easier to apply.
I did some color print making of my own in the mid-80s but quickly concluded it was a job done better and cheaper by the lab. But DIY does give one the ability to dodge and burn for local corrections. One of the reasons photography was put on my back burner interest-wise in the 80's and 90's was moving overseas which necessitated putting the darkroom in storage. Being able to do similar manipulation with digital revived my interest.
As for the angst? I think part of that is the unrealistic expectation, fueled in part by marketing hype, that the technical side of photography is no-brainer automatic and a lack of practical experience gained over time of what matters and what doesn't in practical terms.
For example a 1/10th stop variation in exposure or 300°K variation in WB doesn't bother me because I always capture 1/3 stop under clipping in highlights and 1/3 over in the shadows to allow for changes during the workflow from RAW > JPG.
Color-wise, I always set neutral Custom WB but that's only a consistent process control baseline I use because I can measure it off the card with the eyedropper and because seeing the card in an image re-calibrates my brain looking at the test shot with the card so I can more objectively adjust the color from that baseline to how I want to make it look in all the images...
Once I adjust the color on a test shot like that with the process control I copy / paste it the other shots. If I suspect one of them has a variation due to the lighting specs (exposure / color) I can compare it side-by-side with the skin in the corrected test shot and know how to correct it, which usually is just a small tweek to the color /tint sliders in the RAW file.
That's not to say more precision in the gear isn't better. At the time I bought my lights the ABs were the best value. Other brands had better technical specs, but I really didn't need that level of performance so the additional cost wasn't justified. Today? I'd buy Einstein for the same reason, a good value in terms of price and performance despite the premium over the AB line.
But even with the Einsteins my workflow would be the same and if I swapped my ABs for them today apart from the user interface they wouldn't affect the outcome of the images because of way I structure the workflow to accommodate in-process variation.
cgardner wrote:
Never tested color shift with power because I never had a problem with it. Aware of how strobes vary I bought more power than needed in my space so I could keep them in the middle of their power band most of the time and set wb after setting power.
As for the angst? I think part of that is the unrealistic expectation, fueled in part by marketing hype, that the technical side of photography is no-brainer automatic and a lack of practical experience gained over time of what matters and what doesn't in practical terms.
I have never noticed the problem except at low power when the modeling light and ambient studio light would taint the image.
As others have noted, modifiers have a much greater effect than power levels in my experience.
I think this issue is over rated by online critics. The obsession with perfection overriding their attention to making great photos.
Perfection is not in the system. Repeatability is. I, like others here, create a set up, test, and adjust WB as necessary in post.
As we are the lab we now do final correction in post. Getting as close as possible in camera is what we want to do but obsessing over some things doesn't get us closer.
Let's also be honest about final results. A cursory survey of the ads in any magazine reveals a huge range of what is deemed good color, contrast, etc. And after all that work by the photographer, retoucher and art director, the image then goes to press and victimized by yet another layer of compromise and modification. So what is it supposed to look like? How far away is it from the $50K worth of equipment and $15K of labor that was, at every stage, supposed to ensure perfection?
100K in color temp? Nothing compared to all the other variables ones image can fall into on its way to the print.
^to some extent yes, but magazine editors will take notice of the difference in color and choose not to pick you for the next photo shoot on their ad/website. Which is why photographers in the studio try to eliminate as many variables as possible in order to create consistency throughout.
so yes, if someone catches and asks why there is such a slight color difference, they'll go to photographer B.
Nothing against the alienbees line but facts are facts and purchasing decisions should always consider that.
It may be an issue with product photography. Otherwise it is not. I shoot with elinchroms and they have as much color shift as alienbees and profotos. It has never been a problem with shooting people. I've never even noticed a color change with different modifiers, but maybe elinchrom is better about that than other companies. Most of the time my lights are set no more than 2 stops apart from each other. I doubt you would see a difference in the color of the lights in the same scene. If someone can post an example than maybe you should worry about it then.
