SB-800 gives a warm tone to the picture?

[shineofleo]

<p>Recently I did a lot of flash photography. With my D3, basically, the setting is outdoor and some times it is sunny but sometimes cloudy even raining. I use SB 800 to balance the high contrast scene.</p>

<p>Anyway, in a bright sunny day, I can have a good photo even with out the flashgun. By chance, I found that switch the SB800 on can bring a warm tone to the picture. Of course I can process it afterwards, but out of curiosity, is there any settings in the camera/flashgun to get rid of the orange-ish feeling with SB 800 on?</p>

<p>It is not important or urgent, but I just think that such a good flash light as SB 800 should not do this. By the way I have own this speedlight for around 5 years. Is it possible that the light is getting old?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>Might it be that you're using the flash in cloudy or overcast conditions? The light in such conditions is much more blue, making the flash seem relatively orange. You may need to balance the flash to the ambient using a CTB filter. Sadly, the SJ-1 filter set that comes with the SB-800 doesn't include a CTB.</p>

[shineofleo]

<p>Thanks Mark. That makes a lot of sense. Yes the sky is very blue or cloudy. So a proper filter should be able to eliminate the orange cast. Or, I can adjust in photoshop or simply don't use the flash if the ambient light is good enough. Thanks a lot!</p>

[CvhKaar]

<p>Leon,<br>

If you have set your "white balance" to "auto", your cam will adjust it to the environmental light without flash.<br>

If you still want to use flash in that case ( in many cases that is usefull for things like "Fill Flash") , you might want to set your white balance manually to somewhere between 5500 and 6500 kelvin, ( graycard ??) .</p>

 

[john_tran14]

<p>It's much harder to fix WB if you have different sources of light in different areas of the image</p>

[elliot1]

<p>While my D3 often gets the white balance right, I have been fighting with the same issue for flash photography and find that I need to set my white balance manually to cloudy [instead of flash] to get it right, especially for indoor applications. The cloudy setting seems to work well for outdoor fill flash as well although my camera seems to get it right on its own when I shoot using fill flash.</p>

<p>Best bet... review the pictures you have and manually adjust the WB in NX or similar to see which WB setting works best for you. Manually set the WB to that setting when shooting under similar conditions.</p>

[CvhKaar]

<blockquote>

<p>It's much harder to fix WB if you have different sources of light in different areas of the image</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I totally agree with this.<br>

If i remember wel, the D3 can also do "White Balance Bracketing" but i'm not sure how that works out combined with flash. ( I do not own a D3 .).<br>

Apart from that , when outside in bright daylight I set my flash to AA/FP ( when possible) , this seems to allow for better balancing ( i like to use Aperture Priority...), since it allows for higher sync speeds somehow</p>

 

[walterh]

<p>Leon if you shoot using different light sources with very different color temperatures such as flash and cloudy sky or a mixture of indoor lights near windows you will not be able to get a "precise" white balance because there is no "precise" WB.</p>

<p>Different parts of the image will get more light from one or the other light source and therefore WB is different for different parts of the image. A person may get different light from different angles for example. If the image is important enough to justify the work one can use different WB locally within one image during post processing.</p>

<p>The best way to go would be to set all light sources to the same color temperature using appropriate filters. Obviously this is easier with a filter for the flash than for the sky ^^. In large indoor spaces you also face the problem that the artificial light source may change with the power line cyvle of 50Hz or 60Hz. This can show up as lines of varying colors in the image and cannot be solved using filters but using longer or shorter exposure times (+filters).</p>

<p>So set WB to automatic or as close as possible to the natural light and use compensating filters for flashes and other lights (e.g. in a studio).</p>

<p>Flashes are expexted to be near 6000K but my nikon SB800 is more near 5800. Different output power of the flash will also have an influence on the color temperature (it shuld not but it does).</p>

<p>Using a SB800 for fill flash in slight overcast sunlight works for not so critical work without filters.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.<br>

Cheers<br>

Walter</p>

<p> </p>

[elliot1]

<p>Although I have never used the feature, DXO software has a multi-point white balance option that I believe is to correct images with multiple sources of different kinds of light.</p>

[walterh]

<p>That sounds like a neat feature - anybody got some examples?</p>

[michael_krouskop]

<p>I always use the flash setting when I use my speedlights, either the SB-900 or SB-800, and the color is usually fine. I keep this setting no matter where I shoot and my skin tones look the best. I also get the Nikon warm look if I set my camera to sunny and shoot with a speedlight outside. </p>