Blown Reds in the Bar

[pbalko]

<p>EOS 7D, ISO 3200, LR3, (PS4 if I have to), red light on the singer. This doesn't have to be a DaVinci here. What's the simplest way, if any, to pull back some of the reds? I get this a lot in my club shots.<br>

Thanks.</p><div></div>

[michael_young3]

<p>The obvious first answer is a color correction filter on the lens, in this case probably cyan. Good glass ones are very expensive. Cokin has resin filters for much less. I haven't used them, but that's where I would start.</p>

[leicaglow]

<p>It might add other problems, but you could try changing your color balance. I'd start by seeing what 6-6.5k looks like.</p>

[pbalko]

<p>Thanks for the ideas guys.</p>

<p>Michael Y- The rest of the band looked good under their lights, but I might pop it into PS tomorrow and see what a cyan filter does for it.</p>

<p>Michael A- That turned the middle of his face to a blown yellow along with the red. Interesting effect, though, and may be useful somewhere down the road.</p>

<p>In LR, for future reference, I ended up, in no particular order, and to varying degrees on several shots, pulling the vibrance down to from -10 to -50, pushing the red hue towards orange, and fiddling with contrast, clarity and tone curve till I got something I could live with. Thanks again. Always enjoy trying something different.</p>

<p>Wish singers would open their eyes once in a while.</p><div></div>

[david_littleboy__tokyo__ja]

<p>If the light was red, what you are going to get is red. Not only is that technically correct, but your B and G channels are not going to have very much information in them, so color correction after the fact is going to be difficult/problematic, and color correction before the fact would filter out most of the light coming back from the subject, losing you several stops of sensitivity. When you are actually there watching a concert, the colored lights don't look anywhere near as crazy as they do when you make a print. Life ain't easy.</p>

<p>IMHO, the best thing to do is to convert to B&W. B&W, done well, looks classy, whereas dizzy color simply looks dizzy, even if it was the venue's dizzy color. I know you didn't want DaVinci, but you probably have a lot of images that would be stunning in B&W. I've done this, and it really works.</p>

 

[paddler4]

<p>This won't help with color balance, but it might help with the end result anyway: try setting the camera to show all three color histograms, and then drop exposure enough to make sure that the red channel is not clipping. On many cameras, the red channel is particularly easy to blow (one reason why red flowers are so hard to do). If you keep the red channel from being blown, you'll at least have data, even if you end up converting to B&W (which I also would probably try).</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<p>first set your camera to "tungsten" WB instead of daylight or flash. then try working with the Luminance and Hue sliders in Lightroom's Develop module. and of course, shoot raw. </p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>The obvious first answer is a color correction filter on the lens</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The places that have red gels usually have other gels, in my experience, which is extensive. And they have changing colors. So using a filter is out.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>If the light was red, what you are going to get is red</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is correct.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>IMHO, the best thing to do is to convert to B&W.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is about all you can do except get permission to use flash, which is what I usually do. In a bar, I've never been turned down on that.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>first set your camera to "tungsten" WB instead of daylight or flash. then try working with the Luminance and Hue sliders in Lightroom's Develop module. and of course, shoot raw</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If you shoot raw, there's no point in setting the WB to anything specific. Also, there is no way to correct for this kind of lighting in LR.</p>

<p>If you can use flash, there are things you can do to preserve the atmosphere of the lighting and yet get decent skin tones, like this:</p>

<p><center><img src="http://spirer.com/saintsmar2010/content/bin/images/large/IMG_9893.jpg" alt="" width="694" height="463" /><br /> <em>Saints of Ruin</em></center></p>

[dcstep]

<p>Are you shooting in RAW? If so, then you could change the WB after the fact.<br>

Still, a red light on a white guy is going to yield red.</p>

[pbalko]

<p>Always shoot RAW. I'm not looking to correct the WB. I like the pretty colors. I want to pull back the blown reds on the singer's face, red shirt and guitar strap. Along with the method I described above, I learned that I can also use the, for me, often forgotten Camera Calibration panel in LR.</p>

<p>Dan M, I think, has got the right idea. I always use the blinkies screen for my landscapes and "typical" lighting shots. I'll have to make it a point to shift to the RGB histogram form extreme lighting situations.</p>

<p>David, you're right: the B&W looks pretty nice, but the rest of the series is color and I wanted these to match.</p>

<p>Jeff, your club work is an inspiration, and I'm slowly improving my FEC skills while maintaining color fidelity, but I was travelling light the other night and had left the flash at home.</p>

<p>Thanks all for your interest and helpful suggestiosn.</p>

[indraneel]

<p>I simply could not stop myself from converting your IR like image to B/W. Hope you won't mind. The 7D seems to be so nice for IR.</p><div></div>