Custom color white balance trick?

[JTchinoy]

Hi guys!
I saw Gary Fong's custom color filter trick on youtube and I've been trying to get it to work. I was only able to get it work once, but the flash had to be within 2 feet of them otherwise their skin tone would be the filter's color.
Has anybody had experience with this trick? Like which colors work better or tips on doing the balance properly.
Here's an example of it. The coloring came out right in my camera but photoshop messed up the colors when I opened the raw file.

 

[Garbz]

That's what white balance correction is for. Simple trick, get the subject to hold up a grey card and take a test shot. Providing a consistent amount of your subject is flash lit there should be no reason why you can't get a proper colour balance on your subject.

 

[anmolmehtaaa]

nice photos

 

[JTchinoy]

CS5 puts the value of the white balance at the very limit at 50,000k and the max value of tint, so I can't get it warmer to lose the green.
Does it matter if I use a diffuser/ softbox? And does the distance matter? Or did I just balance it wrong up until now?
Your shot came out really nicely! what did you use? a red/orange filter?

Just got back from playing with it on the roof. I left the flash in the picture so you can see how I tried to do it:

 

[Derrel]

That's what white balance correction is for. Simple trick, get the subject to hold up a grey card and take a test shot. Providing a consistent amount of your subject is flash lit there should be no reason why you can't get a proper colour balance on your subject.

It seems like you do not understand what the desired effect is...

[video=vimeo;27994330]http://vimeo.com/27994330[/video]

 

[Big Mike]

Gary Fong's greatest 'trick' is separating people from their money. :roll: Buy hey, that's capitalism.

 

[DiskoJoe]

I saw a videographer use his white iphone case as his grey card. Works good actually.

 

[DiskoJoe]

Gary Fong's greatest 'trick' is separating people from their money. :roll: Buy hey, that's capitalism.

I need to learn more about this trick!

 

[JTchinoy]

So anybody else got some tips to the trick?

 

[DiskoJoe]

So anybody else got some tips to the trick?

Im still waiting on the secrets to separating people from their money!

 

[Garbz]

It seems like you do not understand what the desired effect is...

So just because the seller of expensive tupperwear uses a blue filter to turn the background red, and I use a red filter to turn the background and sun a deep blue I don't know the desired effect is? :roll:

CS5 puts the value of the white balance at the very limit at 50,000k and the max value of tint, so I can't get it warmer to lose the green.
Does it matter if I use a diffuser/ softbox? And does the distance matter? Or did I just balance it wrong up until now?
Your shot came out really nicely! what did you use? a red/orange filter?

Ahhh I had no idea you were pegging the limits quite so much. I was using a CTO gell with the camera at 2970K (Tungsten) so I had plenty of wiggle room to play with it more, but at the time I took this example shot a CTO was all I had.
I think it's time you explored the curves tool . After you get out of CameraRAW fire up the curves tool and use it to reduce the green channel to give you a bit more natural lighting on your first image. Just note when you hit these extreme points you're biasing your colours to the point where you'll often lose fidelity. It's less of an issue with a modern camera and their fantastic 14bit recording, however bringing up the reds and dulling the greens and blues has a similar effect to dramatically brightening an image and can result in posterisation if pushed too far.

Also community announcement: Before anyone becomes crazy enough to fork out $16 for 4 colour gels I highly recommend checking out ebay where you can get a kit of 32 of the things for about $5

 

[JTchinoy]

Okay, I'll try using the curves to fix it. Thanks!
Yes I noted with the blue shot that it was far from reaching any limits and kept the correct balance, so I guess it's the red effect that caused it.

$5 for 32... are you talking about gels like gary fong's or the rosco set? I'm actually using the rosco set and my blue shot was done with 2 orange filters to increase the effect. My only problem is the way they're hold onto my flash sometimes folds them.

 

[Dao]

So anybody else got some tips to the trick?

Im still waiting on the secrets to separating people from their money!

I have a great idea about how to separate people from their money.


Design a seminar to teach others "How to separate people from their money". The attendee will be charged $100 per person. And then during the seminar, show them how easy he just separate the attendee from their $100 and done.

 

[ShutterSpeed]

i use lightroom for white balance issues, but generally, a good starting point could be focused around the eyes. In Lightroom there is an eye-dropper tool next to the white balance indicator. If you eye-drop the whites of someone's eyes, then it should get you close to a decent starting point. I guess its needless to say that you have to have an object that is absolutely white to be able to do this.

 

[Garbz]

i use lightroom for white balance issues, but generally, a good starting point could be focused around the eyes. In Lightroom there is an eye-dropper tool next to the white balance indicator. If you eye-drop the whites of someone's eyes, then it should get you close to a decent starting point. I guess its needless to say that you have to have an object that is absolutely white to be able to do this.

Lightroom will suffer the same problem as Adobe CameraRAW. The whitebalance is limited to 2000k-50000k some cameras are capable of a wider range, and the curves tool naturally has no limit.

$5 for 32... are you talking about gels like gary fong's or the rosco set? I'm actually using the rosco set and my blue shot was done with 2 orange filters to increase the effect. My only problem is the way they're hold onto my flash sometimes folds them.

Not ones to suit fong's tupperwear, but gels in general. Mine came with velcro strips. No problem with folding here.