how to solve this?

[andylawcc]

P4250541.jpg

I took this pic at one of my manager's farewell party. Today, we will have lunch at the same location again and I will be shooting some pictures. I have adjusted White Balance to several settings, and some pics either turn out too blue or yellow.

and I have a perpetual fear with using the built-in flash....

 

[virtuamike]

It looks like incandescent.

As far as using flash goes, you're going to get an imbalance unless you know what color temp your ambient is (at which point you can use gels to correct).

 

[Anubis]

add blue

 

[OdiN]

Take a picture of a white piece of paper in that environment - fill up a good portion of the image with it. Use that photo to set custom white balance.

I'm assuming your camera can do this. If not, shoot RAW?

 

[andylawcc]

Originally posted by: virtuamike
It looks like incandescent.
As far as using flash goes, you're going to get an imbalance unless you know what color temp your ambient is (at which point you can use gels to correct).

ya, there are 3 Incandescent mode, and I already took sample shots beforehand, and that mode is the most "acceptable" one. But if I use that mode WITH flash, then it get very blue.

Originally posted by: Anubis
Add Blue

I did that to some pics, but some just became tooo blue in some area. (I don't have a sample to show what I mean, but so far adding blue was my only remedy)

Originally posted by: OdiN
Take a picture of a white piece of paper in that environment - fill up a good portion of the image with it. Use that photo to set custom white balance.

Custom White Balance? so I keep taking pic with various color temp / WB setting to see which one works best?

I'm assuming your camera can do this. If not, shoot RAW?

ah... not sure if my work computer's Adobe 7.0 supports Olympus RAW's (I can't install Olympus' own software on work's PC)

 

[OdiN]

If you have a picture with a mostly white item in the environment you're shooting in, if your camera has custom WB, you can set it to that photo and your WB should be about as correct as you can get it. Actually....50% grey works too.

You'd have to check your manual to see if it can set a custom WB by using an image already stored. Though you have to remember to change it off that when moving to different lighting situations.

 

[pennylane]

Custom white balance is a setting that many cameras have (my super old Canon A70 had it). You point the camera at a white piece of paper and it sets the color temperature based on the color temp of the white piece of paper.

 

[andylawcc]

ack, Adobe RAW update only applies to CS2 above.

 

[andylawcc]

lol, I just found a way to totally confuse TFO of my Oly 410 - just shoot a white wall or white paper, it just AF forever and can never take a shot.

 

[yllus]

Originally posted by: andylawcc
lol, I just found a way to totally confuse TFO of my Oly 410 - just shoot a white wall or white paper, it just AF forever and can never take a shot.

You don't need the lens to be in focus to take a shot for the purposes of setting your white balance. On my Rebel XT, I actually set the lens to manual focus when shooting a white card.

 

[andylawcc]

Originally posted by: yllus

Originally posted by: andylawcc
lol, I just found a way to totally confuse TFO of my Oly 410 - just shoot a white wall or white paper, it just AF forever and can never take a shot.

You don't need the lens to be in focus to take a shot for the purposes of setting your white balance. On my Rebel XT, I actually set the lens to manual focus when shooting a white card.

ya, that's my way around it, just switch to MF.


anyway, I follow Olympus Manual's instruction, but it still fails to do CWB or what it called "One Touch White Balance"

step 1: change WB setting to "One Touch WB" mode
step 2: aim at white paper
step 3: hold down the LEFT button and hit the shutter
step 4: it should prompt me for a YES or NO, but it never did.

me fail.

CWB.jpg
instruction manual

 

[Deadtrees]

Some advised using white papers but the truth is that most, if not all, of white papers aren't really white due to the chemical applied on them. In other word, if you use plain white paper, your custom WB will be off. It's always good to use a gray card or anything that's really white instead of chemical white. If you can't find anything like that, here's what you can do:

Change to M mode.
Set the shutter speed close to 1 sec.
(It doesn't have to be 1" sec. Any slow shutter speed would be good enough)

Set the focus to manual and put it in either mimium or maxium distance mode. The point is that everything has to be blurry so that you only capture the light.

While pressing the shutter button, keep shaking the camera toward the wall, ceiling, or whatever that has the least pattern and mixed color.

Doing so will get you a blurry as hell picture that captures nothing but the light which will be your WB picture.

 

[xchangx]

Originally posted by: Deadtrees
Some advised using white papers but the truth is that most, if not all, of white papers aren't really white due to the chemical applied on them. In other word, if you use plain white paper, your custom WB will be off. It's always good to use a gray card or anything that's really white instead of chemical white. If you can't find anything like that, here's what you can do:

Change to M mode.
Set the shutter speed close to 1 sec.
(It doesn't have to be 1" sec. Any slow shutter speed would be good enough)

Set the focus to manual and put it in either mimium or maxium distance mode. The point is that everything has to be blurry so that you only capture the light.

While pressing the shutter button, keep shaking the camera toward the wall, ceiling, or whatever that has the least pattern and mixed color.

Doing so will get you a blurry as hell picture that captures nothing but the light which will be your WB picture.

?

I don't see how that would give you a white balance. I think shooting a sheet of paper will give him a better result even if it's "too" white.

 

[Deadtrees]

Originally posted by: xchangx

Originally posted by: Deadtrees
Some advised using white papers but the truth is that most, if not all, of white papers aren't really white due to the chemical applied on them. In other word, if you use plain white paper, your custom WB will be off. It's always good to use a gray card or anything that's really white instead of chemical white. If you can't find anything like that, here's what you can do:

Change to M mode.
Set the shutter speed close to 1 sec.
(It doesn't have to be 1" sec. Any slow shutter speed would be good enough)

Set the focus to manual and put it in either mimium or maxium distance mode. The point is that everything has to be blurry so that you only capture the light.

While pressing the shutter button, keep shaking the camera toward the wall, ceiling, or whatever that has the least pattern and mixed color.

Doing so will get you a blurry as hell picture that captures nothing but the light which will be your WB picture.

?

I don't see how that would give you a white balance. I think shooting a sheet of paper will give him a better result even if it's "too" white.

A picture is better than thousands of words. Just try it yourself and you'll see.

 

[andylawcc]

I still couldn't figure out how to do the Custom White Balance thing after all, so instead I settled by calibrating a particlar WB Setting (Incadanesce 2) by reducing the R and G.

and then I made the noob mistake as foreshadowed above by using the same WB setting outdoors in broad daylight; thank goodness it can be saved.

 

[soydios]

Originally posted by: Deadtrees
Some advised using white papers but the truth is that most, if not all, of white papers aren't really white due to the chemical applied on them. In other word, if you use plain white paper, your custom WB will be off. It's always good to use a gray card or anything that's really white instead of chemical white. If you can't find anything like that, here's what you can do:

Change to M mode.
Set the shutter speed close to 1 sec.
(It doesn't have to be 1" sec. Any slow shutter speed would be good enough)

Set the focus to manual and put it in either mimium or maxium distance mode. The point is that everything has to be blurry so that you only capture the light.

While pressing the shutter button, keep shaking the camera toward the wall, ceiling, or whatever that has the least pattern and mixed color.

Doing so will get you a blurry as hell picture that captures nothing but the light which will be your WB picture.

interesting technique, but yeah, that should theoretically work.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: andylawcc
I still couldn't figure out how to do the Custom White Balance thing after all, so instead I settled by calibrating a particlar WB Setting (Incadanesce 2) by reducing the R and G.

and then I made the noob mistake as foreshadowed above by using the same WB setting outdoors in broad daylight; thank goodness it can be saved.

daylight can be saved even in jpg. yay!

 

[andylawcc]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: andylawcc
I still couldn't figure out how to do the Custom White Balance thing after all, so instead I settled by calibrating a particlar WB Setting (Incadanesce 2) by reducing the R and G.

and then I made the noob mistake as foreshadowed above by using the same WB setting outdoors in broad daylight; thank goodness it can be saved.

daylight can be saved even in jpg. yay!

nooo.. I meant, the pic can be saved by adding a heavy dose of red

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

As others have said, try your best to get a RAW editor / converter. Fixing white balance issues in RAW is very easy and with RAW editors that support batch operations, you can fix the white balance of a whole group of pictures all at once. Since I shoot RAW, I find that I never set a custom white balance with a gray card. The most I'll do is use one of the camera's white balance presets and fine tune everything in the RAW program.

RAW editors that I've used that have white balance correction (using the white balance dropper tool):

Phase One Capture One: excellent, by far the best IMO
Lightroom: very good, but IMO not as good as P1
Bibble: generally mediocre and can sometimes be downright horrible. Changing WB on a batch is incredibly hit or miss.

 

[virtuamike]

Originally posted by: andylawcc

Originally posted by: virtuamike
It looks like incandescent.
As far as using flash goes, you're going to get an imbalance unless you know what color temp your ambient is (at which point you can use gels to correct).

ya, there are 3 Incandescent mode, and I already took sample shots beforehand, and that mode is the most "acceptable" one. But if I use that mode WITH flash, then it get very blue.

Already provided the fix to that. Gel your lights. If there's a blue imbalance, then use orange to balance them out. Rosco gives out sample gels at most camera stores. Pick up a sample pack - they'll fit hotshoe flashes.

 

[soydios]

Originally posted by: virtuamike

Originally posted by: andylawcc

Originally posted by: virtuamike
It looks like incandescent.
As far as using flash goes, you're going to get an imbalance unless you know what color temp your ambient is (at which point you can use gels to correct).

ya, there are 3 Incandescent mode, and I already took sample shots beforehand, and that mode is the most "acceptable" one. But if I use that mode WITH flash, then it get very blue.

Already provided the fix to that. Gel your lights. If there's a blue imbalance, then use orange to balance them out. Rosco gives out sample gels at most camera stores. Pick up a sample pack - they'll fit hotshoe flashes.

seconded. that Rosco swatchbook has almost all the gels you could ever need.

 

[Zenmervolt]

2 minutes in Photoshop: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/z...volt/P4250541_copy.jpg

Edited the color balance, shifted mid-tones very slightly towards Cyan and Blue, then shifted highlights much more extensively in the same directions. Then auto colors and auto levels. I'm sure someone here could do better, but it's pretty presentable now IMO.

ZV

 

[andylawcc]

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt
2 minutes in Photoshop: http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/z...volt/P4250541_copy.jpg

Edited the color balance, shifted mid-tones very slightly towards Cyan and Blue, then shifted highlights much more extensively in the same directions. Then auto colors and auto levels. I'm sure someone here could do better, but it's pretty presentable now IMO.

ZV

i only played around with Mid-tones... cuz Highlight (to me at least) seems to change overtly drastic, mid-tone "seems" to be more subtle.

 

[Zenmervolt]

Highlight will change just the color balance of the highlights (i.e. the very bright areas) and you can use that to bring the white areas back to white without messing up the color too much in the people's faces (though there is still a slight bluish cast in my edited shot, most noticeable in the face of the girl in the red shirt). Play around with all of the color balance areas and see what you can get. Unfortunately, with a JPG, it's not nearly as easy to re-touch white balance.

ZV

 

[andylawcc]

thanks Zem, I will play around with highlights then.