Question about colour temperature for the wedding/event 'togs...

Nifkin

Nifkin

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...from an occasional wedding 'tog :D

Doing my second wedding of the year next weekend, woot. The venue is a stately old pile oft used for the purpose. I was talking to the managers there and asked them what sort of lightbulbs they use (e.g. tungsten, LED, halogen etc), because I'll be using a lot of on-camera bounced flash (coz it's a bit gloomy in there, but with white ceilings fortunately) and want to gel it up appropriately. Anyway, they told me that all the rooms have a mix of those three lighting types and more, so the colour temperature will be all over the place. My question is, do I just leave my camera on AWB (I'm shooting RAW), or, for the purposes of consistency, with the preview Jpegs at least, is there a 'best setting' one of you recommend I use? I'm quite aware that I may be missing the finer point of how white balance works on a Canon, so happy for any suggestions based on experience, ta (y)
 
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Nifkin said:
...from an occasional wedding 'tog :D

Doing my second wedding of the year next weekend, woot. The venue is a stately old pile oft used for the purpose. I was talking to the managers there and asked them what sort of lightbulbs they use (e.g. tungsten, LED, halogen etc), because I'll be using a lot of on-camera bounced flash (coz it's a bit gloomy in there, but with white ceilings fortunately) and want to gel it up appropriately. Anyway, they told me that all the rooms have a mix of those three lighting types and more, so the colour temperature will be all over the place. My question is, do I just leave my camera on AWB (I'm shooting RAW), or, for the purposes of consistency, with the preview Jpegs at least, is their a 'best setting' one of you recommend I use? I'm quite aware that I may be missing the finer point of how white balance works on a Canon, so happy for any suggestions based on experience, ta (y)
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I can't imagine that they'll have any daylight balanced bulbs, as those feel quite clinical.

I'd put 1/4 or 1/2 CTO on your flash and white balance, and then let AWB do its thing if I were you. Certainly have strips of both, sometimes going /too/ orange on your flash gel can look horrendous, and having a background warmer than the foreground can look pretty nice a lot of the time anyway
 
Get a few shots with a white balance card in different parts. It will give you a starting point to adjust from in your editing program.
 
Mintchocs said:
Get a few shots with a white balance card in different parts. It will give you a starting point to adjust from in your editing program.
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Paul-H said:
Or take your white card and do a custom white balance in camera, just remember to do it in each room, but still take one picture with the card in shot for adjustments in Post Processing, just in case
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I wouldn't bother. There's no such thing as "correct" white balance, just what looks right. So use AWB, shoot RAW, sort it out creatively in post.
 
There's 2 ways of looking at this, you can shoot a colour checker and work your nuts off to sort it out in post, or you can accept that in most venues every time you turn around there's a different colour light source, ensure your flash lit subject is white and allow the colour of the ambient background to just 'add character'
 
Thanks everyone. Think I may well start by taking a grey card shot in each room of the venue for reference, then stick to AWB with an ungelled flash for the day. As said, unlikely that the room lighting is daylight balanced, so worst that can happen with flash is warmish backgrounds, I guess...
 
StewartR said:
I wouldn't bother. There's no such thing as "correct" white balance, just what looks right. So use AWB, shoot RAW, sort it out creatively in post.
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This ^^^ totally :agree:

I'm also commonly finding that some newer bulbs actually flicker, we can't see it usually but a high-ish shutter speed can have the same shot (ok, so 3 per sec on my preferred burst rate) with bright orange light-source, 1/2 orange and totally any other ambient - at a couple of venues its proving to be a real PITA as the WB changes by over 500k several times a second. Then I have one which is an 'orangery' - looks like a big conservatory to me as there's no oranges in it - these flickering lights are the RHS light source while the LHS is ambient only, you can imagine the WB gradient and flicker effect that has !!!

Even using a grey card won't help most of the time if the lighting isn't totally constant, so just sort it out after is what I do

Dave
 
DG Phototraining said:
I'm also commonly finding that some newer bulbs actually flicker, we can't see it usually but a high-ish shutter speed can have the same shot (ok, so 3 per sec on my preferred burst rate) with bright orange light-source, 1/2 orange and totally any other ambient - at a couple of venues its proving to be a real PITA as the WB changes by over 500k several times a second.
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I don't know about "some newer bulbs" but it's certainly the case that old fashioned tungsten bulbs and fluorescent bulbs flicker 100 times per second (twice the frequency of the mains electricity). You can prevent this affecting you by ensuring that your shutter time is a multiple of 1/100th of a second, i.e. 1/100th, 1/50th, 1/25th, etc.

Some newer DSLRs have an anti-flicker function that allow you to use faster shutter speeds - they delay the shot for a few milliseconds if necessary to synchronise the shutter with the peak brightness of the artificial lighting - but I think you have to choose to enable it. Read your manual.
 
StewartR said:
I don't know about "some newer bulbs" but it's certainly the case that old fashioned tungsten bulbs and fluorescent bulbs flicker 100 times per second (twice the frequency of the mains electricity). You can prevent this affecting you by ensuring that your shutter time is a multiple of 1/100th of a second, i.e. 1/100th, 1/50th, 1/25th, etc.

Some newer DSLRs have an anti-flicker function that allow you to use faster shutter speeds - they delay the shot for a few milliseconds if necessary to synchronise the shutter with the peak brightness of the artificial lighting - but I think you have to choose to enable it. Read your manual.
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Newer as in they've replaced the older ones that didn't do this :)

And while shooting at a lowish shutter speed should indeed solve this issue it gives blurred B&G photos - WB being all over the place is my preferred option to blurred clients :D

Dave
 
Just remember if using pp to sort colour balance the bride *will* know the colour of her dress. Render her 'antique ivory' dress white or cream and they will let you know!
 
GordonM said:
Just remember if using pp to sort colour balance the bride *will* know the colour of her dress. Render her 'antique ivory' dress white or cream and they will let you know!
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I used to think that, but they don't IME as 'correcting' in a mixed lit room can look weird. I've used a Grey Card a lot of times and rarely actually gone with 'correct' for this reason

Looking right rather than being right is fine

Dave
 
StewartR said:
I don't know about "some newer bulbs" but it's certainly the case that old fashioned tungsten bulbs and fluorescent bulbs flicker 100 times per second (twice the frequency of the mains electricity). You can prevent this affecting you by ensuring that your shutter time is a multiple of 1/100th of a second, i.e. 1/100th, 1/50th, 1/25th, etc.

Some newer DSLRs have an anti-flicker function that allow you to use faster shutter speeds - they delay the shot for a few milliseconds if necessary to synchronise the shutter with the peak brightness of the artificial lighting - but I think you have to choose to enable it. Read your manual.
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Stewart, do you know if the 5D3 has this anti flicker function?
 
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Phil V said:
I believe it does.
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Phil, can you direct me towards the reference to it in the user guide? I've been through it, but seem to have missed it [emoji106]
 
Phil V said:
I believe it does.
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I might be wrong, but I think I remember there being a big song and dance about anti-flicker on the 7D2 when it came out, as it was the first camera to have it? Which would mean the 5D3 doesn't.
 
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Nifkin said:
Stewart, does the 5D3 have an anti flicker function?
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No. The first camera to have it was the 7D Mk II, which came out a couple of years after the 5D Mk III.

PS Sorry about the overly pedantic answer to your previous question. I'd just been having a "chat" with my sister on Facebook and I guess I must have still been in wind-up mode. Sorry.
 
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Nifkin said:
Phil, can you direct me towards the reference to it in the user guide? I've been through it, but seem to have missed it [emoji106]
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Seems it doesn't.
I considered the 5dIII to be a contemporary of the 6d which has it.
 
It's become a general pet-hate of mine to have heavily mixed coloured bulbs....

I've found, like others that many LED bulbs have some significant flicker which causes odd exposure issues. Swings and roundabouts with the wacky exposure/whitebalance flicker of floruescent tubes...

I usually just spend a little while getting a best look WB on a couple of images in Lightroom then sync across, sometimes I will use the colour adjustments to pull down the saturation of a specific colour where things have got particularly wacky and mixed.

Bouncing/balancing flash, I'll leave that to those who do it more often than me...seems like some sound advice given there already.
 
All good then. I won't be fannying around with gels, I'll just whack the camera on AWB and simply concentrate on getting the right exposure. Will sort out the colour cast in LR.
 
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Nifkin said:
All good then. I won't be fannying around with gels, I'll just whack the camera on AWB and simply concentrate on getting the right exposure. Will sort out the colour cast in LR.
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Presumably your subject is lit with flash?
So the only colour shift is on your background which adds 'atmosphere' and 'warmth' and rarely needs any fixing.
 
Yes, I'll be using as much natural/ambient light as I can, but using flash to lift when I have to. I've been
pretty impressed with the 5D3's high ISO performance so far.
 
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