I think this is a lighting issue - hair color off - other colors fine?

I have been taking some pictures of my nephew, who has strawberry blond hair.

However, all the pics I have ever taken of him make his hair look much redder

than it is in real life. There are some red highlights in it, but nothing as

dark-red as it looks in his pics. Under some light sources it does look more

reddish, but in daylight looks more blondish. I can't seem to bring it back to

how it looks in person by playing with the white balance, or by removing color

casts in curves. Is this an issue with the way I am lighting him - using strobe

on camera, bouncing off white ceiling, and bounce card as well as north and east

windows open. But regardless of where or how I've shot pics, seems to produce

same reddish results. Thanks for help.<div></div>

I think you have a monitor calibration program. There is too much red.

 

The skin on his hands and feet look pretty dark pink/red and his lips border on the garish red lipstick sold today. His skin is a nasty red also.

 

I just did a edit on my photo computer and will post.

Made a hue Saturation adj layer, and lowered the saruration of just the red channel, I

also moved it a bit toward orange and lowered the red brightness a little.<div></div>

Now it got a bit green<div></div>

I certainly prefer the first, at least on my monitor, the nephew has been turned green on the second.

 

It looks to me like the saturation might be a bit high. What camera do you have? Maybe try turning down your saturation one notch and shooting again. From your description it sounds like you have too much color, not necessarily the wrong color. I don`t want to start a camera brand war here but the photos I have seen from Canon`s lately seem to have too much artificial punch. The colors are bright, but not necessarily very real.

 

Just my thoughts.

d200 with a 70-200mm f2.8. Nice combo. Are you shooting with the default image setting?

No, not on default. I will look to calibrate my monitor again, just did it over a month ago, can it get that off, that soon? I calibrate it to match to my local print shop. But anyway, I think there is a slight misunderstanding - when I say his hair is red, I don't mean red as in the opposite of cyan, I mean red as a hair color, which is really more carrot like, as opposed to the blond that it looks to me under most lighting conditions. That is why I posted this in the lighting forum, I thought it might have something to do with the way I am lighting him.... No amount of work in PS has been able to give me the right color tone to his hair. Thanks for your thoughts thus far.

First of all, his hair doesn't look that red to me. But without actually seeing him in person, how would I know?

 

Secondly, how is the rendition of his skin in relation to how it looks in person? I would think if it is a situation where the capturing media has a hard time with colors (there are such colors), the skin tone would also be affected. With film, there were some colors that were impossible to capture accurately, mostly certain purples, and fluorescents. I notice that digital cameras tend to emphasize the red/magent/yellow.

 

I wouldn't think that strobe lighting and using white for bouncing surfaces is going to create too reddish an image. Ambient light, particularly tungsten, 'getting into' the exposure, though, might have an effect, and possibly modeling lights.

On my monitor, it looks just fine. I don't see a very strong presence of red in the hair. I prefer the colors of the original picture. The revisions look too cool for the skin.

 

If you are looking at it in the AdobeRGB colorspace, reds will be more saturated than in the standard web space (sRGB).

 

It may also be the case that the camera captures what we don't want to see in real life? :)

 

If it is a strong concern of yours, you can fix it in your photo editor. Duplicate the layer. One layer will have the body and scene in the correct WB. On the other layer, bring the hair to the color that is desired and then mask off the body.

Nadine,

Skin tones and clothing look fine, it just seems to be the hair that isn't true to real life.

What about the ambient light/modeling light issue?

Only lights are strobe, bounced off white ceiling, with bounce card foward, and natural light.

Yes, but if you have a slow enough shutter speed/wide enough aperture, some of the ambient light can be recorded 'in' the flash exposure. Same for modeling lights. Since most indoor lighting is tungsten, and modeling lights are tungsten, the color temperature is yellow/orange, so it indeed, the exposure recorded some ambient, the tungsten color temperature could contribute to the reddish hair, particularly if you used a hair light or light close to his head.

Erica, I don't think this is a lighting issue. The D200 runs a bit strong (magenta and

red) in the reds. In fact, every Nikon I've ever used does this, but the D200 is

particularly noticeable. It's pretty distinctive, I knew before I read it that you were

shooting Nikon. His skin tone is a bit magenta-y too. In Selective Color ("relative"

box checked), about -10 to -15% M, + 5 to 10% C cleans it up reasonably well.

 

FWIW, my dog has brindle coat and that's almost impossible to get right. Same

problem.

 

 

 

B

That's what I thought, too, Brad, but I use Canon so I don't know the ins and outs of Nikon. With Canon, red (not magenta) is (too) strong. That's why I asked about the skin tone. However, skin tone is a lot harder to compare with 'real life'. The fact that you are not satisfied with any rendition of his hair (I assume with different lighting situations) seems to point toward something like the above, and not lighting.

How did you process the shot? What color mode is set? One of the modes (don't recall which) pumps up the red channel. If you shot RAW, pull the image in Nikon Capture NX and try different color modes (you can download the trial version of Capture NX if you don't have it).

Maybe you should try one of these. What kind of camera are you using ?

 

http://www.overlandphoto.com/pages/expodisc.html

You asked: Is this an issue with the way I am lighting him - using strobe on camera, bouncing off white ceiling, and bounce card as well as north and east windows open.

 

I answer, yes it could be: and there could be other factors too, and many have been mentioned, but: Ignoring the Nikon red / magenta bias; Ignoring monitor calibration; Ignoring any post processing.

 

But pedantically nit picking the scene`s lighting:

 

1. Flash was bounced off white ceiling: I bet the ceiling was NOT White: it will have surely thrown a cast.

 

2. The direction of that bounced light strikes the hair and the face at different angles, different angles of illumination from a cast, will render different colours, albeit they are minute differences, but we are talking minute differences in colour tones.

 

3. Exposure was 1/40 @ F3.2 ISO100: Plenty of latitude for average room ambient and or modelling lights to get in the exposure, perhaps only 2 or 3 stops down from the main exposure.

 

4. The direction of that ambient will cause minute differences as per point 2 above.

 

 

Possible Lighting Solutions, using one or a combination:

 

1. Create a studio atmosphere: Studios are dark for a reason: no ambient Colour Aberrations and distortions.

 

2. Use Photographic Reflectors and / or umbrellas: not ceilings of unknown colours.

 

3. If using Modelling lights ensure they are new, or at least the same age.

 

4. Use a colour temperature meter and test the modelling lights and hot lights if you use them

 

5. Use a Standard Photographic Grey Card in the first frame as a reference.

 

WW

Adobe RGB is no good for showing pictures on the web ...converted to SRGB, tried to set the white point, minor changes .. see attached picture

"But regardless of where or how I've shot pics, seems to produce same reddish results. Thanks for help."

 

Not sure about this, but you might have to increase your aperture by 1 to 1 1/12 stops to get accurate hair results. Remember the old formula of getting snow to look white. However, that might blow out the skin features. I know when using hair lights you have to adjust the lamps depending on what color hair(black, brown, gray, blond etc.)

 

As far as the picture having to much red, I don't think so. The face and the clothing look OK on my monitor, but the hands and feet are probably under exposed, which gives them a redish tint. Try moving your lights around so that the light covers your nephew evenly. If that doesnt work there is allways Photoshop.

Wow,

Thanks everbody for all your imput! I will yet get his hair blondish! (Nothing against red-heads.) No, I was not using a hair light or modeling lights. With only one light, I was trying to record the ambient natural light for a side light, but there were no other artifical lights on. Anyway, perhaps this is just a case of a hard color to nail, as Brad W said. I will keep working it. I was hoping to just get it right in camera, and not have to over PS it just to get his hair right - seeing as how I have a lot of pics of the little guy. Mode in camera is on custom, with everything set to zero, except maybe sharpening which I think is on +1. Color mode is I (that's a roman numeral one). Only post-processing I did was in lightroom, played with curves, sharpened in PS, set WB.

I just think the image doesn't pop very much. But that's personal preference. <br/><br/><center>Some of the skin tones are lost in the sRGB conversion, but this is the 10 second version....<br/>

 

<img src=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3029/2553167629_c521608474_o.jpg></center>

I think this is getting closer to hair color, but (at least on my screen) this washes him out too much. I appreciate everybody doing their best to PS him back to the right color, but my real desire is to get it to render more or less correctly in the camera. Do you think it has anything to do with his hair being not really fully grown in yet, kind of whispy, and getting reflections off his scalp, or the way the light is reflecting on the wispy texture?

It actually looks better in PS in adobe RGB.... it's in sRGB here and the important colors do end up rather washed out.

 

Regardless, to get the best shot from the start, hold up a grey card where the subject will be, take a shot, set a custom white balance and go. One thing to remember is that if there are tungsten or flourecent lights in the room and you are using flash heads, your may be mixing color temperatures (unless your flashes are completely blowing out any ambient, which is the point of studio lighting anyways).

 

If you are using a flash/ambient mix, you will have to color balance your flashes using a CTO filter (tungsten ambient lighting) or a CTG gel (flourecent) or else you could end up with some nasty color casts that are very difficult to deal with in post process. Tungsten lights are around 3600K and your flash is probably close to 5600K. This is a pretty significant difference.

 

In the above scenario, setting your white balance for tungsten will render areas lit by the flash warmer than areas lit by actual tungsten ambient light. Using a CTO gel on the flash head will render everything evenly. Otherwise, try using daylight as your ambient... It may balance slightly better with your flash (although you might then need a CTB filter instead :)

 

The only options with this image in particular is to create two different versions using two white balances in DPP and then merge them in photoshop. Yes it's going to be a pain :)

This may sound odd but there is a strong possibility that his hair is darkening (many blond babies have hair that rapidly darkens to red or brown) but you still 'think' of him as how he was a year or six months before. This is a well known and very common trick that minds play; you will frequently find people that cannot accurately describe their own family even after many years because it is the very early memories that get ingrained in the memory.

 

You could probably set up a test using an objective observer.

 

In my view the efforts to 'correct' the photo will detract from the complexion before they will make a material impact on the hair. The general tonality does not look overly warm, assuming the background material is a neutral grey. It is perhaps a tad underexposed, but really I think that you will not find an answer in the technical world.

 

Sounds mad but I hope it helps!