85 B wrong?

[royall_berndt]

I recently shot with an 85B filter over the head of an off-camera flashgun. This was the main light on the subject,

and there was no significant light from another source; my digicam was set to tungsten balance. But the resulting

shot was too yellow. I expected natural tones. Is 85B yellower than tungsten light?

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Royall, if there was no other significant light, why on earth did you bother to filter the flash? Couldn't you just have set the WB to flash?</p>

<p>Did you 'drag' the shutter by any chance? Thus allowing some ambient light to pollute the colour balance. Or was the flash bounced or diffused in some way that might have yellowed it?<br>

If not, then either the filter is the wrong colour, the flash is much warmer than the average flash (about 6500K IME), there was some reflection from a yellow surface, or you're mistaken in having set the WB to Tungsten.</p>

<p>#85B filters do vary a little bit in colour, but I wouldn't expect a shift so strong that it couldn't be easily corrected in post. A faded filter OTOH would have given a blue cast. What make was the filter?</p>

[royall_berndt]

I was unclear about the significant other light. I meant there was no particular light on the subject except the flash. There was sunlight well in the background. I wanted the sunlight to go blue, which is why I used the filter and set the camera to tungsten. But you hit the real problem: the walls where I was shooting are yellowish, so all the bounce light added to the warmth. In the resulting shots, the model looked jaundiced.