Last week I was trying to take some shots at night without a flash, using only firelight (but lots of it). I didn't realize just how badly the 'auto' WB of my Nikon D70s was judging the white balance. Does anyone have any opinions on this? Or next time do I need to take 2 minutes and bracket a shot with all of the white balance options? Or just shoot raw and adjust afterwards? The pictures of people I took all look overly red, even when the fire was very bright and behind me.
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Thu, September 7, 2006 - 10:16 PMIf the D70 has live preview and allows you ... you might just check how the scene looks as you rotate thru the different presets for WB.
I wonder if you can build your own custom WB with a white card (or however Nikon does custom WB) right there on the scene? Once you've set it for that light situation, and saved it, you could pull it up again whenever you had a similar shoot. -
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Thu, September 7, 2006 - 10:50 PMHmm, of course I looked at the pictures on the viewscreen after taking them, but maybe I didn't pay enough attention to the WB (gosh, I bet that nobody else does that ;-) ) or else the ambient light covered up the sins of the poor WB choice of the 'auto.' I think that your suggestion of the custom WB using a white card sounds like the best and quickest way to gauge the WB. Of couse, that's another 10 pages in the manual I'll have to read (sigh). -
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Fri, September 8, 2006 - 12:07 AMI've been shooting with my Olympus for about 2yrs now. I've gotten to the point that I now shoot manual 98% of the time.
Maybe it's because I'm a control freak, but I like the idea that I'm taking the picture (even though if I shot everything in auto it might turn out better). I run my histogram full time and tweak my aperture and shutter speed.
I've defaulted my WB to auto. The biggest problem I'm currently having is remembering to choose my WB instead of letting the camera do it (although - once again the camera does a pretty good job without me).
I'm hoping the burners in this tribe will tell us if there is a standard WB for flames.
Maybe someone can discuss a little about the different kinds of man made light sources. If you shoot a city street scene at night, you may find that those different light types combined can be a challenge.
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Sat, September 9, 2006 - 8:18 AMI woulld think that setting your wb to something other than auto would work out best, then adjusting the images after the fact. Of course you will have the most control with a raw, but you can get a jpg to balance in PS. The reason I would say not to use auto in a situation like this is because the camera tries to find the correct balance for you each time you take a picture. Thus, your color balance is going to shift drastically depending on how much of a certain color is in the image. And I have found it is alot easier to just do the color balancing on one image in PS and applying that adjustment to all from that nights shoot with very minimal adjustments afterwards, than it is to make majoor adjustments for every image.
Then again, the light from a fire, assuming you are burning wood, is going to be rather red. In this case, maybe using a flash on a low setting to fill in a bit more color would work.
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Sat, September 9, 2006 - 2:47 PMwhat "look" are you going for? what to do, or what not to do all depends on the artists vision for a final iamge... what do you want? -
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Sat, September 9, 2006 - 2:50 PMThe 'look' is basically to copy what I am seeing... my friends bathed in a yellowish light, looking contemplatively into the fire. It seems like I am unable to duplicate that yellowish light... it always seems to come out with too much red. I guess I could try to photoshop it, but I'd much rather be able to get the colors that I want from the start. -
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Tue, September 12, 2006 - 12:24 AMtungston.
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Re: White Balance for night w/o flash?
Sun, September 17, 2006 - 8:10 AMBlank, Chris is correct in his analysis..
Fire changes drastically I am assuming you are trying to photograph a fire performer? Generally speaking if you are photographing fire performers the begining of the burn is a brighter depending on the fuel source the performer is using.
I have shot with both film cameras and digital and always have left the Digital cameras on Auto White balance and tweaked it afterwards in Photoshop. Like Chris said I have shot extensively with strobe or flash as fill which brings the performer into closer white balance. Most burns last two minutes if you have to change white balance for each shot you will be expending valuable seconds adjusting the camera unnecessarily.
If you use strobe, shoot with the aperature underexposed by 1/2 or 1/4 stop.
If the flames are moving fast and you desire trails shoot with slow shutter speed, if the flames are moving slowly then it is the other end fast shutter speed.
Check out my Howward Shot with swords
people.tribe.net/abjectpho...2323e2754b
this is an example of strobe use at fast shutter speed.
people.tribe.net/abjectpho...9a16c09a3c
this is an example of strobe use with slow shutter speed
and this is another
people.tribe.net/abjectpho...5cba6b1d47
