Everyday home lighting?

[kschalo]

So I'm wondering...for regular home light fixtures, are any of the bulbs out there (cfl, incandescent, led...) better than the others for photo lighting? It's mostly just for when I'm at home with the littles trying to take pictures of them. Setting up lights isn't really an option so I was thinking if I had better light bulbs/fixtures it might help the problem. I realize it's not a solution, I was just hoping it might help.


Example, unedited (shot with Canon T3i, 50mm 1.4, 1/250, F2.8, ISO1600, raw. Lighting: overhead fixture and large window camera right)):

IMG_4354 by jkschalo, on Flickr

It's very grainy (high ISO I know, required for being inside), and the color sucks.

 

[tirediron]

99% of the issue is white balance. Home light bulbs have a variety of colour temperatures and their quality control is often not that great. A quick and easy solution ('though not the most accurate, it will get you reasonably close most of the time) will be to shoot in RAW and in the first frame include something as close to pure white as possible. Failing all else, a sheet of regular white bond printer paper will do, then import the files into Lightroom, or whichever editing application you use and use the white balance tool to set the colour off of the white object in the image.

 

[dxqcanada]

Colour Temperature - Technical Information ? Light bulbs, LED bulbs, halogen lamps, spot lights and tubes
Lighting wiki - color temperature - Philips

Note that many people don't like the cooler look of higher kelvin lighting in the home ... warm light feels comforting.

 

[kschalo]

Colour Temperature - Technical Information ? Light bulbs, LED bulbs, halogen lamps, spot lights and tubes
Lighting wiki - color temperature - Philips

Note that many people don't like the cooler look of higher kelvin lighting in the home ... warm light feels comforting.

I'm not sure how this helps? Higher kelvin lights will produce better photos?

 

[kschalo]

99% of the issue is white balance. Home light bulbs have a variety of colour temperatures and their quality control is often not that great. A quick and easy solution ('though not the most accurate, it will get you reasonably close most of the time) will be to shoot in RAW and in the first frame include something as close to pure white as possible. Failing all else, a sheet of regular white bond printer paper will do, then import the files into Lightroom, or whichever editing application you use and use the white balance tool to set the colour off of the white object in the image.

I did shoot these in RAW, can I fix them now even without the white piece of paper?

 

[dxqcanada]

Camera's are calibrated for daylight colour balance. The Auto white balance in the camera compensates for warmer or cooler light.
The closer to daylight your lightbulb is, the easier for your camera to balance it to daylight temp.
You can also use manual white balancing as tirediron mentioned.

What is White Balance?

 

[tirediron]

99% of the issue is white balance. Home light bulbs have a variety of colour temperatures and their quality control is often not that great. A quick and easy solution ('though not the most accurate, it will get you reasonably close most of the time) will be to shoot in RAW and in the first frame include something as close to pure white as possible. Failing all else, a sheet of regular white bond printer paper will do, then import the files into Lightroom, or whichever editing application you use and use the white balance tool to set the colour off of the white object in the image.

I did shoot these in RAW, can I fix them now even without the white piece of paper?

Higher Kelvin will produce more accurately coloured images IF it's the right "higher" Kelvin, typically around 5500 or so.

Absolutely; the paper just makes it easier. Open up a RAW file in Lightroom (or whatever application you have), and find the white balance adjustment, and slide it back and forth 'til you find the "right" colour. It won't however fix the noise in the images, only more light can do that.

 

[Designer]

so I was thinking if I had better light bulbs/fixtures it might help the problem.

Don't get all into changing out your lighting bulbs/fixtures. You can spend tons of money and still not make much of a difference. It's better to just pay attention to the WB, as Tirediron has written.

 

[MGRPhoto]

The easiest solution (aside from just adjusting white balance in post) is to use an external flash when indoors and bounce the flash off the ceiling. The Canon flashes are pretty expensive but you can get something like a Yongnuo YN560III that will do just as good of a job for stuff like this.

 

[WayneF]

I did shoot these in RAW, can I fix them now even without the white piece of paper?

Including a known white reference in the first test shot is best, but most images, including this one, has lots of white in it. Not all white is adequate, but much of it is.
See White Balance Correction, with or without Raw

Now, use your White Balance Tool in Raw to click on the white cup top, or on the white areas of the cereal box will acceptably fix it. Or even clicking on the white background wall will vastly improve the color. Probably just choosing Incandescent WB is better than nothing. Try a few things, choose the best result.

A Porta Brace White Balance card is $5 at B&H and is real good stuff. A WhiBal brand card is probably a bit better, but more costly. But even a white envelope or cheap white copy paper (not the brightened stuff) will be far better than nothing.

 

[Designer]

Here is a quick edit. I adjusted the WB (using skin tone) and a crop.

 

[kschalo]

Thank you everyone that responded. I will definitely try out the white card and I think I will start researching flashes. And on another note, thank you all for not jumping my sh!t. More often than not I feel like people get slammed on this forum and I was a little nervous about posting this.

Designer, we're slowly replacing all of our bulbs to LED's anyway so if there was a better bulb/temperature that worked better I would look into that.

 

[WayneF]

I will definitely try out the white card

So, you didn't bother to click some of the white stuff already there? Just teasing, but I expected you to come back with a WOW!

 

[kschalo]

I will definitely try out the white card

So, you didn't bother to click some of the white stuff already there? Just teasing, but I expected you to come back with a WOW!

I haven't had time to sit down and mess with it yet. 4 kids, dad's at work today and I'm making homemade enchiladas. Look for my excitement around midnight when I finally have 3 seconds to myself.

 

[KmH]

The photo you posted has a very strong orange-ish color cast because your camera's white balance was set to sunlight (5500°K) and the lights in the overhead fixture are tungsten/incandescent lights (2700°K - 3300 °K).
Tungsten/Incandescent is likely one of the white balance settings your camera has.

If you get a flash to use indoors the flash unit will deliver light equivalent to the color temperature of direct sunlight, and will be 'mixed' with whatever other light sources you have on in a room.
Color casts (like the orange above) caused by mixed lighting can only be completely corrected for 1 of the mixed lighting source color temperatures.
If you use flash and tungsten lighting and correct the for the light the flash delivers the photo will still have a orange-ish color cast from the tungsten light.
If you correct the for the light the tungsten lighting delivers the photo will still have a blue-ish color cast from the flash.

There is an easy solution, gel one of the light sources so it matches the color temperature of the other light source.
In the case of shooting inside a home, it is easiest to gel the flash to match the color temperature of the other light source in a room.

For tungsten lighting you use a CTO gel on the flash unit.The CTO gel lowers the color temperature of the flash (5500°K) to the color temperature range of tungsten lighting (2700°K - 3300 °K).
You then set the camera's white balance to Tungsten/Incandescent and your photos will have no color cast.

If you want to go the other way and convert the tungsten lights to the color temperature of the flash, you put CTB gels on all of the tungsten lights in the room.
Which is why I said above, it's much easier to gel the flash.

Here is the photo you posted fully corrected for the incorrect white balance setting in the camera when the photo was made.
Note: As noted above regarding using mixed light with no correction at the light source, the photo now has a slight blue-ish color cast to it from the sunlight coming in the window camera right because in efect the corecvt white balance fot eh window light should be the Shade of Cloudy WB camera setting.
The orange color cast hid the more subtle blue-ish color cast in the image.