stopping my pictures coming out orange

I was wondering if someone could advise me on how to stop my pictures going

orange when not using a flash and the light is a little poor.

 

Thanks.

There's different color temperatures for different lights. There is Daylight, which is standard for perfect white balance, then flash which is equivelent to daylight, then tungsten light which is yellow and comparable to warm sunsets and then there's the dreadful fluorescent which gives everything a green cast. You need to either set a custome white balance in your camera if it allows for that by photographing something white in the scene or photographing a gray card and adjust in photoshop orset the camera to the specific mode that will perform best under that type of light. It's all about the color of light, you should do a search on different color temperatures.

If you're shooting digital, adjust the whitebalance setting in the camera, or if you shoot raw, adjust it when processing the raw-file.

 

If you're shooting film ... either use a film for tungsten light rather than a daylight film, or use an appropriate filter (that filters tungsten light for daylight films ... unfortunately this makes light even poorer).

What camera and what WB setting?

 

I believe an AWB with no adjustments should render reasonably accurate if not slightly cool (oppposite of what you are describing) WB under most lighting, but most Nikon DSLRs drift to the warm side under artificial lighting and then you should shoot in RAW with a grey card reference shot.

Sorry, I presumed DSLR and forgot that there are still a lot of people here who shoot film. Naturally, film requires filters and/or changing film emulsion.

... hey Anthony

 

according to her Flckr site, she shoots a D50 (she writes in her profile) and possibly a Sony DSC P-120 (found from EXIF info from photos).

 

hey Hannah, as everyone else said, adjust the white balance ... here's another fix: convert it to B&W or Sepia :)

 

regards, michael

auto white balance using higher iso under incandescent light on a d50 will make for an orange image. Try switching the white balance to incandescent when shooting indoors and trying again.

Thanks for the info Michael.

 

Dan, my D200 tends to be too warm even when I use the Flourescent and Incandescent WB settings.

I have a D50 also and have seen the same orange photos. While the D50's AWB generally

does a good job under good light, it does pretty poor under low light. I am not sure how

other cameras perform or if the photos would normally come out cool, but the D50 does

produce warm photos under low light.

 

The best options are to plan ahead and produce a custom white balance. Like someone

said you need to have something white in the image. Another neat trick I just learned was

to place a white coffee filter over the lens and point for the camera at the primary light

source to set a custom white balance. So far that seems to have worked pretty well for

me. As for the basic procedures to set a custom white balance, you should be able to find

those in your manual. If you have questions, post back and I will help you with them.

 

The other option is to always take your low light pictures in RAW. With RAW, you can

easily adjust the white balance in post processing. In this case, you will probably see a

orange photo on the LCD, but with Photoshop, Nikon Capture DX, or a similar program

you can fix it later.

forgot to mention that the D50 is setup to shoot a vivid image. Might need to go in and change the colorspace to srgb1 and saturation to normal. The built in portrait mode works well for this too. I usually shoot A priority and in the menu set my mode to Portrait. Of course nailing the white balance first is key as the other posters have stated and shoot NEFS. In fact I might try the coffee filter trick sometime.

Check the white balence.

Hi Hannah this does sound like a White Balance / colour tempreture problem. I have never used a Nikon but looking at the D50 review on the website Dpreview, I see you can select which light you are shooting in! worth a look. see link

 

 

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/page9.asp

James, how does the AWB on your 5D work under artificial light?

Hi Anthony , AWB can be a little hit n miss I must admit. But on the whole its not bad. Why are you having problems? I did have some portraits come out a bit red recently.