Canon 5D and fluorescent lighting

[kevinbriggs]

I�m presently using the Canon 5D. I have a quick question regarding the use of

flash (580ex, on camera) and fluorescent lighting.

 

I�m going to be involved in a wedding reception that is going to be held in a

room with a lot of overhead florescent lighting. Do I set the white balance for

�flash� or �florescent�?

 

The same question could be applied to tungsten lighting, of course (I anticipate

that I will be shooting fairly soon with a flash in a room that is primarily

tungsten lit): do you set the white balance for �flash� or �tungsten�?

 

Thanks in advance for all replies!

 

K.

[kutaphoto]

Shoot raw and pick your white balance later.

[awindsor]

If you want to balance the WB between foreground and background you need to gel the flash. I normally don't bother with tungsten since a warm dark background is often pleasing but a green background (what you get if you balance for the flash with fluorescent lighting) is unlikely to be all that attractive. The standard gel for mostly correcting flash to fluorescent is normally referred to as "Plus Green". Then balance for fluorescent or better yet set a custom WB.

[awindsor]

Mixed lighting is a curse to balance and shooting RAW is not a panacea. Sure you can convert with a WB for each different source and then try and blend the conversions but it is much easier to ensure that the light sources are all similar.

 

Lee make specialist strobe filters or you can use Rosco or Lee gels for theatre lights and cut them yourself. I think Sto-Fen make a fluorescent (and tungsten) balanced Omni-bounce (not that I am a fan of the Omni-bounce but if you use it then you should be aware of these coloured versions).

[picturesque]

I shoot RAW, set the white balance on auto or flash, and correct later. Usually I am setting color temperature closer to flash when in the RAW processor, but it can vary depending on how close to the fluorescent lights the subjects are, and how much flash they "receive". You can set your shutter speed to cut out a certain amount of ambient fluorescent, but you end up with dark backgrounds, and if the actual fixtures show up in the image, you still get green halos around them. You can gel if you don't have any windows in the room letting in daylight. Partial color correction with gels are more successful with tungsten, where you can let some of the tungsten color show up in the background and it doesn't look so bad (as green), even with daylight coming in through windows. If you are shooting JPEGS, I'd try working with a custom white balance, but even that will not be perfect, as it will vary in different parts of the room and how much flash the subjects get. Using off camera flashes in conjunction with an on camera flash will give you cleaner, flash-temperature images, basically cutting out most of the ambient fluorescent without ending up with dark backgrounds.

[lovcom_photo]

In those instances (mixed lighting) I shoot raw (do anyway), and during conversion I set the WB manually, but of course this is no panecea as someone already wrote. While in PhotoShop, I use an adjustment layer to "spray paint" the different color casts away because during raw conversion, my WB correction fixes most parts of the picture but not all, so touching up the image especially the backgrounds can make for a very convincing result. In the last mixed lighting I dealt with, the subjects in the foreground were hit by my flash, but up ahead was incadesent, and the background was bathed in fluorescent, so the raw had some very colorful casts of different colors on different parts of the image. But the final post-processed looked very usable.

[eric merrill]

You can certainly use Photoshop after the fact to adjust parts of the photo to whatever lighting conditions exist. Or, you can gel your flash and not have to worry about as much post-production work. I'd lean toward the latter, myself.

 

 

Eric

[lovcom_photo]

Eric, on balance I'd have to agree with you, but there are times I get caught off guard at a function, not expecting the mix of light that sometimes happens. Sometimes if the picture subject looks great, I'll live with the funky lighting off to the side or background....but yes, it is better to get it right or as near right as possible at the time of exposure.

[keith_lubow]

How about just using black and white film?

 

;)