How do I determine the predominant color temperature of the Interior lighting?

[MMeticulous]

Hello,

How do I walk into a commercial environment and determine the predominant color temperature of the existing interior lighting? This is for interior architectural shoots, so I will know how to gel my lights to match.

Thanks!
:mrgreen: Jeff

 

[Big Mike]

Color Meter

 

[MMeticulous]

Color Meter

YIKES! That's a grand!

Is there a more afordable way for us poorly funded newbies?

Thanks for the feedback!

:meh:

 

[Buckster]

All the photogs I know, myself included, just eyeball it. You can usually tell right off if you're working with incandescent bulbs or fluorescents, and whether you'll need to gel your strobes to get in tune with them, and those are the two biggies.

Then, take a shot and have a look. Too yellow? CTO filter. Too green? Window green filter. Still too much one or the other? Stack another one on there, or use a stronger one - there are 1/4 CTOs, 1/2 CTOs, etc.

Also, keep in mind that sometimes you want a bit of warmth, especially in homes, or just the opposite maybe if you're shooting a lab or other clinical environment. Most often, you'll want that selectively, where the room may be warm or cool or even green overall, but have some aspects perfectly white balanced, or just the opposite, where the whole is white balanced well, but certain areas are warm, cool or greenish.

Get a white balance tool to use for helping you with these choices and learn to take control of your camera's white balance ability, especially the custom white balance

I think you need to learn to play these things by ear, just as an artist with paints and brushes chooses what colors and tints to use for certain parts of a scene - you are, after all, painting with light. There are color meters, as posted above, but as you've seen, very expensive.

I've read somewhere that some folks are also working with white balance settings in their cameras, pulling color temperature test images up in a laptop, then determining exact color temperatures with Photoshop (and maybe Lightroom), and using that info to gel. I don't remember where I saw that, and no, I don't remember how it was done. I saw a vid not long ago where David Hobby or Joe McNally or someone (can't remember who) was saying that Canon and Nikon need to build that ability into their cameras for easy reference (as opposed to buying and using a $1000+ color meter).

For now however, you'll likely be 'chimping' to determine your scene's color palette, like most of us.

Here's a Strobist primer that might help too:

Strobist: Lighting 101: Using Gels to Correct Light

 

[RyanLilly]

One thing you can do, is to do a custom white balance with the ambient lighting, take a photo maybe have a person holding a piece of poster board, or at least wearing a white shirt, so you can compare how white is rendered and also skin tone, then add your lights,halogen 3200ºk, if I remember from a previous post. Take another picture. If the color seems off then you can start trying gel, start with a 1/4 value gels, and work your way through different levels of color correction until you get to the point where both your lighting and the room lighting match pretty well.

Remember that you can add more correction as you go, so 2 layers of 1/4 blue make 1/2 blue and 2 layers of 1/2 make full blue, and so on.

 

[robertwsimpson]

One thing you can do, is to do a custom white balance with the ambient lighting, take a photo maybe have a person holding a piece of poster board, or at least wearing a white shirt, so you can compare how white is rendered and also skin tone, then add your lights,halogen 3200ºk, if I remember from a previous post. Take another picture. If the color seems off then you can start trying gel, start with a 1/4 value gels, and work your way through different levels of color correction until you get to the point where both your lighting and the room lighting match pretty well.

Remember that you can add more correction as you go, so 2 layers of 1/4 blue make 1/2 blue and 2 layers of 1/2 make full blue, and so on.

that's what I would do.

just wear a white shirt when you work, and take a picture of yourself in each shot before you take the real one, and you'll get the bang on white balance for every shot... or at least a very close approximation.

 

[inTempus]

Or keep a gray card around your neck and stick it out there when you change settings for a test shot that you can use to set white balance later in post production.

 

[CSR Studio]

I always have a gray card in my bag for architecture. Works really well. I can see the color of most light but when you get 2 or 3 combined it is very difficult to see so you need something that you can trust.

 

[MMeticulous]

One thing you can do, is to do a custom white balance with the ambient lighting, take a photo maybe have a person holding a piece of poster board, or at least wearing a white shirt, so you can compare how white is rendered and also skin tone, then add your lights,halogen 3200ºk, if I remember from a previous post. Take another picture. If the color seems off then you can start trying gel, start with a 1/4 value gels, and work your way through different levels of color correction until you get to the point where both your lighting and the room lighting match pretty well.

Remember that you can add more correction as you go, so 2 layers of 1/4 blue make 1/2 blue and 2 layers of 1/2 make full blue, and so on.

Thanks for the feedback! I tried to "thank you" in the last thread, but it wouldn't let me thank anymore people... there must be a limit.

Anyhow, since I'm shooting in RAW, does white balance even matter or can I just as easily fix it all in post? I've read a lot that you shouldn't mix light colors, which I guess is my primary concern here. What are your thoughts?

Thanks again!
:mrgreen: Jeff

 

[MMeticulous]

Get a white balance tool to use for helping you with these choices and learn to take control of your camera's white balance ability, especially the custom white balance

Buckster, I appreciate all the feedback you've given me on several of my threads!

As for the white balance tool you mentioned, what exactly are you referring to? Are you talking about adjusting the custom white balance on location or in post?

Thanks again!
:mrgreen: Jeff

 

[MMeticulous]

just wear a white shirt when you work, and take a picture of yourself in each shot before you take the real one, and you'll get the bang on white balance for every shot... or at least a very close approximation.

That seems like a pretty good habit. I'm thinking I also could get some sort of white flag and shoot it under the same lighting conditions, prior to the real shot. Maybe something I could hang from a spare lighting tripod or such.

Thanks!

 

[MMeticulous]

Or keep a gray card around your neck and stick it out there when you change settings for a test shot that you can use to set white balance later in post production.

This intrigues me, but I don't understand what you're saying. Where can I get this type of "gray card"? Is gray better for setting white balance in post than pure white? Can you just shoot it at arms length from the camera or does it need to be positioned further in the shot? Can you please elaborate a bit on this technique? I'm really interested, but don't understand.

Thanks again to everyone for all the feedback!!!
:mrgreen: Jeff

 

[Buckster]

Get a white balance tool to use for helping you with these choices and learn to take control of your camera's white balance ability, especially the custom white balance

Buckster, I appreciate all the feedback you've given me on several of my threads!

As for the white balance tool you mentioned, what exactly are you referring to? Are you talking about adjusting the custom white balance on location or in post?

Thanks again!
:mrgreen: Jeff

There are a wide variety of white balance tools that do a good job, either at the time of shooting by using them to dial in a custom white balance on the camera, during post production by using the eyedropper tools in post production editing programs to click on the tool photographed in the scene on a test shot and using that setting for the rest of the photos you've shot, or a combination of both.

I set it after the fact in post production for years, and as long as the color's not WAY far off to begin with, it seems to work pretty well. In talking with other photographers, I've recently become convinced that going 'old school' and setting it at the time of shooting is a better solution. Anyway... Something for you to experiment with on your own and see what works best for you.

ExpoDisc is a very popular white balance tool. It's rather expensive as the oft-regarded "king" of the white balance tools. You put it on your lens, shoot through it toward the light source you want to balance, then you can either dial a custom white balance, or use the photo you just took in post production to set white balance after the fact.

Less expensive but similar products are available if you sniff around for them, and probably do just as good a job at setting true color temperature. I'm currently using a white balance tool called the Prolite Micro-Disc that I picked up on Amazon for $25, a drop in the bucket when it comes to white balance tools. Rather than a shoot through tool like the Expodisc, it's a shoot-at tool, but works essentially the same for getting a bead on white balance in camera or in post, whichever works best for you.

Cheaper yet is a "General Brand White Balance Lens Cap", another shoot-through tool that promises what all the others do. Maybe it delivers as well as an Expodisk, maybe not. Like they say, you get what you pay for, but for a mere $9 plus shipping, you can hardly go wrong to find out.

Here's yet another variation on the disk products.

Back in the day, we used Pringles potato chip lids and coffee filters. People have set up a bunch of white objects they've found around the house and garage that they'd be willing to tote around with them, set some colored objects in amongst them, take a shot, then do a post production on the test shot to decide which white object did the best job for their needs, then they use that.

This is where those shirts and pieces of paper and stuff come into play. Do the tests, and you'll find that they're not all actually white. Instead, they have their own subtle color influences that we can't usually see with our auto-exposure, auto-white-balance eyeballs, but the camera and post production software can - and it will adjust for them. You can see the real difference when you shift an entire scene's color to one, and think, "Gee... that looks awfully (insert color here)". Like I say, shoot a bunch of white things in one shot all next to each other, then run the eyedropper over them in Photoshop and see how the color blends change from item to item per the RGB values - that tells you that they're not actually equal, in terms of "white", so choosing which one to use for "white balance" can be iffy at best.

Other solutions are in the gray card realm of white balance tools. These are cards of cardboard or plastic, or fabrics (often in convenient collapsible hoops) that you hang from a stand or have a model hold, and you can use them pretty much the same way as the disks (but you don't shoot through them, obviously). You take a shot at the thing at the beginning of the shooting session, then you can use it to dial in a custom white balance on the camera, or just start shooting away and use that first test shot in post production to dial in a white balance after the fact.

Lastolite makes some nice products, but you'll pay for the name (and the quality). One cool thing about them is they often do double duty as reflectors, even including systems that can accommodate, white, silver or gold reflectors onto them. Pretty slick, actually.

PhotoVisions Calibration Targets look pretty good too.

The simple 'old school' tool, photographic gray cards, can be had at most photo supply stores, online or in real life. B&H has a variety of gray cards to choose from at prices ranging from dirt to diamond. So does Adorama, and of course, there's good old Amazon.

As mentioned earlier, these products can help you set up a proper white balance in the camera at the time of shooting, or set it up in post production software, or using a combination of both.

And just to throw yet another monkey wrench into your quest for perfect white balance - you might not always want it. You'll start with your tool, dial in as good a white balance as any seasoned pro, then in post, you might decide you'd like that scene just a little warmer or cooler, to help set the mood better, and you'll start working the color temperature and tint sliders to make that happen.

Still, starting at a set place is the best. If you decide to dial in a different color balance from there, you can, but at least you can have the confidence and peace of mind going in that you've got something that's workable.

 

[Antithesis]

If you have mixed lighting, your not really ever going to get it perfect. But, for the most part if there is one type of bulb throughout a room, you just learn which setting works for different types of lights. Your camera's WB settings for these situations is usually pretty good, no matter the manufacturer. There is really only a few you will encounter and those are: Incandescent (standard bulb, warm gel), Sodium (like, in a gymnasium and those are really warm too I think) and fluorescent (which will go either a sickly green or bluish depending on the bulb, shoot once in 'sunlight' setting and look at your LCD and see if it looks either green or blue and you know what gel to shoot with... thank god for digital).

It is really good to be able to fix it in post though. Digital makes it really, really easy to do in Lightroom or PS, so I never really bother with the gray card thing. If you only have to edit a handful of shots, you can use masks to hide some bad coloration (i.e. adjustment layer for color and mask it). At least, it'll work in a pinch and still look pretty good.

 

[IgsEMT]

Few General Suggestions:
*Preset it with the grey card or a white sheet of paper. White sheet isn't as accurate as grey card but it is generally close. Grey Card is better.
*If you have Live View in your camera, turn it on and change WB until you see what you like.
*Shoot RAW and process it later.

Good Luck