Help with color...

[import2nr88]

This is from My first night shoot i attempted. I live in Temecula which has a Observatory on a local hill so all lights with in about 30 miles are yellow (and really really yellow at that) what filters can i use to make this white car look more white?

Nikon D50
Manual Mode
25sec shutter
f5.6
200 ISO
No Flash (as I didn't want the reflectors on the car to be bright)
No post prossesing.

by the way... This image is Ok To Edit.

 

[JDP]

Get yourself an 18% grey card, place it in the general area and use the custom white balance setting to set the scene. You can alternately try by setting white balance off of the white car, but I've never really been able to get custom WB to work with white.

Or, just pull it into photoshop, even an auto-adjust colors would fix it in no time.

 

[import2nr88]

Thanks i will try that but i also tryed setting the custom white balance of my car under white light when it appeared to be "white" looking. i will try the 18% next time out. I can get it right on when under normal lighting, its just theres yellow lights everywhere around here. thanks again
-jon

 

[xfloggingkylex]

Yay a scoobie. I was just shooting my brothers car last night at a school parking lot. The white balance in camera that i used was florescent light - white lights. What I did to really find out the color temp correction for each WB setting is take a picture, change the WB, take another, change the WB, change and so on, until I figured out what I liked best (since I dont have a gray card either). The florescent -white light setting on my camera does really well and I actually prefer that over "tungsten" even under tungsten lighting simply because the tungsten setting removes all redish orange from the shot and to me makes it look unnatural (cause I see the orange too!!!)

 

[Arch]

A simple way is to just shoot in RAW.

 

[import2nr88]

But wont just shooting in RAW make it easy to edit in ps or the like software? Im looking to take the best pics i can before post processing anything. i will go out and try shooting in raw but what will that acutally do for the pic its self?
thanks jon

oh and xfloggingkylex But the difference is that you are just shooting under floresent light but its white floresennt light... the light im shooting under is a yellow bulb behide yellow glass everywhere. they say the yellow light is less obtrusive and doesn't radiat as much when they are looking at the stars on the hill.

 

[Arch]

But wont just shooting in RAW make it easy to edit in ps or the like software? Im looking to take the best pics i can before post processing anything. i will go out and try shooting in raw but what will that acutally do for the pic its self?
thanks jon

If the above shot was in RAW, you could easily change the white balence to anything you want. So the end result would be as if you had the perfect setting when you took the shot.
white balence swapping is one of the many benefits of shooting RAW and eliminates the need to learn in camera white balence settings.

 

[import2nr88]

well that would be good because on my camera my white balance is kinda limited as compared to my friends Cannon 30D but his camera is worlds above mine. i will have to try shooting in RAW when i get home, but would it be benifical to shoot in ps mode or what ever it is called? its the format made to work in adobe products.
-jon

 

[ChrisWade]

Gray card is an OK suggestion as long as it is one for digital and not film. To get your white balance right you have two options...one to use your camera's custom white balance option or to include a known gray reference in the image or a test shot that you can use during post processing.

Chris Wade
Creator of Perfect-Pixs
www.pixelplace.ca

 

[Rob]

I think it works better with the colour more neutral... here's a quick PS edit to show what I mean:

 

[import2nr88]

thats the look im goign for... exactly. now what did you pull in photoshop to make it look that way, was it just an color adjustement, or was is combo'd with a hue saturation? i was hoing to be able to shoot straight from the camera like that but i dont see it working with the lighting i have avail.
thanks
jon

 

[rmh159]

Not sure if you realize it but your D50 can bracket for WB. So it'll take a single shot and apply 3 different WB's to it. I'm not sure how it chooses but I want to say it picks one that is what the cam feels is accurate, and then warms it up and cools it down.

RAW or Photoshop I would think would be the easiest though... it's VERY easy to correct these things in RAW.