Photography for Architecture and Real Estate Page 01 Color, Color, Color

Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 01 Color, Color, Color

As you work in architecture photography you will be presented with locations that require you to manage the color. It is imperative that you learn to match your strobe lights to the ambient lights sources and sometimes that is easier said than done.

The light that exists all around us is ambient or available light. The sun, light from a streetlight, and the interior lighting in the building are all considered ambient light. Often times these light sources are not the same color as daylight having a different Kelvin temperature. Each of these light sources, such as florescent, sodium vapor, mercury vapor, and incandescent all have a different color spectrum.

When one of these is the main light source in the building you are photographing and using daylight settings on your digital camera, you will have a color shift in the direction of that light sources color temperature. For example, Cool White fluorescence tends to turn green while sodium vapor's are very amber in color and with daylight settings the picture will take on that color shift.

If I am shooting for a home builder for example and one wall that is white has a color shift they may ask what I am thinking. What if you are shooting for Miller Paint and capturing home interiors? If the color balance due to light sources makes the paints off color, there lies another problem. Managing color is not that difficult. You essentially determine what the color balance is for the available lights and mixed with any daylight, then make a determination on how to correct this.

As a photographer you need to recognize color issues and take action to correct for it. If you are a digital photographer you’re certainly aware of auto white balance (AWB) and custom white balance (CWB) settings on your digital camera and these can work pretty well, but only in a few situations.

Auto white balance does a pretty good job of compromising but in this situation the camera can be fooled if there's a heavy emphasis in one particular light source. For many photographers setting the camera to auto white balance is the solution, but it does not fix color, it just finds a compromise and in situations like I just described, the result is less than optimal. The photographer has to spend quite a bit of time on the computer adjusting incorrect colors.

Here is an example of mixed light: daylight from the windows, fluorescent in the kitchen, and tungsten in the dining room. Very off-color.

All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 03 The presets on digital cameras are rarely much help either and they are for JPEG anyway, not RAW. You should be shooting RAW for sure! The color coming from a green fluorescent light fixture mixed with a little bit of window light creates a whole new color so neither the preset for florescent or daylight presets will achieve the desired results in these mixed light situations. There are other options that you can pursue to obtain good color balance within your scene. One is to overpower the ambient light with strobes and use a fast shutter speed which denies the ambient light into your exposure, but this often results in an unreal looking photograph. Am- bient light is real light and often is needed in creating a photograph that is believable so by eliminating that light in your scene you create an unrealistic and unbelievable image.

Here are two examples shot in a home and showing a color shift. The image on the left is uncor- rected while the image right used a color meter to more accurately compensation for the color shift.

Ambient Light: Using it and Correcting for it. As mentioned previously, Ambient light is available light and often, light you have no control over. Sometimes you can turn indoor ambient light off, but its when you can’t, that making adjustments in your shooting approach are required.

Sources could include lights that are tungsten, sodium or mercury vapor, fluorescent, and often there is a combination of more than one of these light sources at a location. These days, most homes you will photograph will have Tungsten colored lights and occasionally fluorescents.

Each light source has a color and it’s rated in Kelvin Color Temperature with daylight being 5500K. Tungsten at 3200K is amber, sodium vapor are very orange/red around 2100K, and Metal Halide are closer to daylight.

(3.1)Kelvin temperature color relationship: Amber warmer warm Daylight cool cooler blueish blue 3200K 3800K 4500K 5500K 6200k 6800 7500K 8000K

Kelvin is used as a measurement standard and is most often associated with the measurement of color temperature of light sources Color temperature is based upon the principle that a black body radiator emits light whose color depends on the temperature of the radiator. Black bodies with temperatures below about 4000 K appear reddish whereas those above about 7500 K appear bluish. Color temperature is important in the fields of image projection and photography where a color temperature of approximately 5500 K is required to match “daylight” film emul- sions. Digital still works this way but is more flexible.

All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 05 There are different fluorescent lights, but the most common is Cool White. They have a Kelvin temperature around 4000K, warmer than daylight, but they also produces a green cast. Fluores- cents not only need a correction for the blue/red shift, but need filtration to bring the green part of the spectrum into line. (there are lots of fluorescent light colors with cool white the most common) For the sake of explaining color theory, this lesson will illustrate points as if you were shooting with daylight film. I’ll address digital white balance later in this lesson. We will discuss first, how to filter for ambient light before we address adding strobes to a shoot setup.

(3.2)The following is a color chart of light sources and their respective Kelvin temperature.

Artificial Light sources: Candle Flame 1800K Sodium Vapor 2100K 40 Watt Bulb 2600K 75 Watt Bulb 2800K 100Watt Bulb 2900K 200 Watt Bulb 3000K Tungsten 3200K Mercury Vapor 3300K Photoflood Lamp 3400K Carbon Arc 5000K H.M.I. 5500K

Daylight: Sunlight, sunrise or sunset 2800-3000K Sunlight; one hour after sunrise/sunset 3200-3400K Sunlight; two hours after sunrise/before sunset 3900-4100K Direct sunlight midday 5000-5500K Overcastsky 6000-8000K

Determine next, what the color balance is before you even think about setting up your strobes. You can do this by looking at the light sources and the markings on the tubes. By using a color temperature meter and I use the Minolta color meter. These are not made anymore so the Se- konic Pro Digi is the best out there.

Once you have determined where you will be photographing and know that you will be mixing your daylight strobes with ambient light, you take a color meter reading to determine what you will be dealing with. If your reading is 4000K, that tells you that the light is warmer than daylight. Remember that Tungsten is amber and rated 3200K, so 4000k is on the way to becoming Tungsten. If you took a picture now with a daylight WB it would have a slight amber cast.

The color wheel is universal in its meaning and works here just as easily. If your ambient light is green you add magenta, the opposite of green, to eliminate the green shift. This principal works the same no matter the color.

Now we don’t have an option to add Magenta on our cameras unless you dig in deep to the menus. Yes there is but that be- comes very complex, so stick with AWB.

I have found my digital cameras to actually be quite forgiving in respect to color shifts. When I think the background should really shift, it doesn’t shift much. However, this is little consolation if precise color is needed. If you are shooting a home interior for an architect and there is mixed light, you cannot have blue light on the white wall and amber light on the other side with green fluorescent in the kitchen.

Unlike shooting film, where your film camera cannot adjust for different Kelvin temperatures, digital cameras can by using manual white balance. (Check your camera. Some of the more amateur digital SLR’s do not have this ability.)

You can set the camera at a variety of different Kelvin temperatures to adjust for the ambient light color shift. Even though I am shooting digitally, I still use the color meter. The nice part is that I do not have to put CC filters on my cameras lens because I am adjusting for the color shift by changing the Kelvin temperature in white balance settings.

Auto White Balance Fluorescent

Daylight Flash

Shade Custom WB

Cloudy Manual

Incandescent

You can use each of these presets if you are in different lighting conditions and shooting jpeg. However, if you start to shoot a kitchen with a window (most have them) and use the incandescent preset, your color may be off because the preset is not accounting for the blue window light from outside, only the kitchen light. So I find the presets of little value especially when Auto White Balance (AWB) is so accurate…...and I only shoot RAW.

To select Manual White Balance, you hold the same button and spin the dial until the K shows in the LCD. Then spin the quick dial to select the Kelvin temperature you want or that matched the ambient light. Here I have selected 5500k for daylight, but if I wanted my camera to shoot at Tungsten setting of 3200k I would spin the dial until I reached that number, then press the Set button in the Quick dial to keep that selection.

Custom WB A very accurate method of achieving good color balance in some situations is to use Custom WB. I will explain this using a Canon camera and be sure and check the procedure on your camera. First, photograph a white card making sure that the white card fills the spot metering circle in the middle of the viewfinder. You will be doing this after you have determined what your lighting will be.

Next go into the menu and select Custom WB where the screen will appear. You are now asked to select an image and you want to select the image of the white card and press the SET button. Now go back to the LCD, hold the AF/WB button and turn the dial until it lands on the Custom WB symbol. You are now set!

The WhiBal website has an excellent video on how to properly use the device when photographing. You want to hold the WhiBal/grey card at your subjects position so it gets the light on it that hits the subject.

If you are shooting a scenic, then you can just place the WhiBal in the scene and zoom in and shoot it. For other photography, if you want the face of a portrait neutral then hold the card at the face. If you want a product neutral, then hold it next to the product and shoot it. For architecture I place it where I think the point where all color sources converge so it is the compromise I need. Once you have the RAW files open in Camera Raw, click Select All and then select the white balance eye dropper and click on the WhiBal card. All the images will have their color adjusted. Slick! Next we’ll discuss the use a color meter where you take a reading and then set that reading on your cameras WB to match the color meters reading. From the you go one step further and add filtration to your strobes and/or ambient lights for an even more precise color balance. We’ll talk about that ahead but first let’s look at color meters.

Back to the previously described scenario: you have a client that you are shooting architectural interiors and for example, are shooting the kitchen. There is a big green fluorescent fixture in the ceiling and a tungsten chandelier in the dining area right next to the kitchen that is spilling some amber light into the scene. Which color do you set the white balance to?

AWB will average the mix of color and will do a good job but it does not fix color, it averages for the best common ground. CWB will provide very accurate color as well, but where do you measure your CWB, the kitchen or the dining area? The client is hiring you because you are a pro and will provide technically accurate color.

This diagram shows green in kitchen (fluor), amber in dining (tungsten), and daylight form front windows. Where do you measure the color balance from?

All meters are not the same either! Minolta was the standard for years until Sony bought Minolta and dumped the meter. Gossen and Kenko makes meters as well, but these meters (last I checked) were designed for film. Sekonic manufacturers a meter designed for film and digital. It is the Pro Digi CR500. What’s the difference between film and digital? Digital settings in the Se- konic are calibrated to what the human eye sees while the meters for film are calibrated for film characteristics.

The Sekonic has 4 color sensors, an extra red, while the other meters have 3 sensors. If you apply a film color meter (like older color meters) reading to your digital camera the color might be off. If you apply a color meter designed for digital it will be much more accurate. Color meters are all about the light in front of the camera and are best used to measure all light sources.

The way to think about it is you use the meter to measure all light sources and then find some common WB that will best represent the scene. Many photographers feel you can do the same with CWB and no meter is needed, however, the color meter can tell you where the central point of all colors is where CWB wont. The meter shows you what the color difference is 1’ left or 2’ right as an example. CWB does not. So the meter helps you decide just where to find that compromise point.

As you walk around clicking the meter to take a reading, you get an average of what the meter sees.

It might be 4000k in the kitchen (yellow) and it might be 5000K at the blue spot. It could be 3800K at the green spot and 4800K at the blue point.

As you walk around metering, get close to the front window, right in the middle of the kitchen and dining are and make a mental note of the Kelvin temp that comes up the most.

Based on the above example, the average might be around 4500k. So take a test shot at 4500k set in Manual WB and evaluate the color. It is a start and if you notice to much color adjust, reset and test again.

Below right is the corrected swatch- halfway between the left patch and right. The solution for mixed lighting is to measure across the scene and

determine what is the most dominant color and then using the included color charts to gel your light sources to match and then use a CWB to balance the image file. The goal is to move from mixed light to common light.

You first turn on the meter and check to make sure that the meter is set to the Color balance (film or digital white balance) you are using. Here the meter is set for Daylight (D). If you were using tungsten balanced film /digital you set the meter to that (B). ‘A’ is for the old 3400K Kodak films.

You push the film button to make sure it reads 5500K or the Kelvin temperature you plan to shoot in.

You next push the side button to take a reading of the ambient light color temperature where your subject will be. Here the display reads 4000K.

You next push the LB Button (Light Bal- ance). It reads -67.

Turn the meter over (right) and under LB chart look for the closest to -67. -56 is closer to -67 than -81 is, so you will see next to -56 that it calls for an 80C Filter. This is the first filter that goes on your lens. Its blue and it is canceling out the amber color shift.

(Left) Turn the meter back over and push the CC (Color Correction) button. It reads -3.

(Right) Turn the meter back over again and find the CC chart where is shows -3 to be between -2 and -4. I will choose -2 and place a .05 Green gel on the lens next to the 80C. This should give a perfect color balance where the meter reading was originally taken.

No light source is ever color perfect and even though they basically are in the blue/amber range, there is often green mixed in as well. I photograph on assignment, locations that always have mixed light surprises such as tungsten light with a fluorescent fixture right next to it.

In the before mentioned office, the meter read 4000K and if you just use the basic Kelvin chart and add the recom- mended 80C (blue) filter, that will cancel the amber. But you shoot your photo and later find a green cast. That is because you missed filtering for the green. This again points to the importance of a color meters precision readings.

Once you have taken a reading and added the filter's to the lens, shoot the photograph on daylight film, you should have neutral color balance in your photo with no color shift if the mixed lighting throughout your scene is the same Kelvin Temperature.

WAIT..you are not shooting film. That is how the film color meter works, but for digital, just take a reading and when it says 4000k, set that in your manual WB and you are all set.

Using the new Sekonic Pro Digi C-500R The Sekonic meter is truly the state of the art in reading color temperatures. It has many new features never before seen in a color meter and here is how it works: The first thing you do is turn the meter on by pressing the power button.

4 Next you want to choose between digital and film and this will depend on what you are using. You do that by 2 first pressing the menu button (1) and spinning the jog wheel (2) until you see the display showing DG/film (3). Now press the measurement/OK button (4) on the side and the digital or film indicator at the top will then blink. 1 By spinning the jog wheel you can choose between digital and film and once you've made that selection, push the measurement OK button again to set it.

Next you want to select the measuring mode and the C-500R comes with four different modes. To select which mode you wish to use first ,press the mode button and while holding it spin the jog wheel to make your selection. The first is ambient light mode (1) (below) which is designed to measure the ambient light and determine Kelvin temperature and this is indicated by the sun shaped symbol. The next mode is the cordless flash mode (2) and this allows you to take a reading without the meter being tethered to your light and its symbol is the broken arrow. The cord mode (3) is next and it allows you to be tethered to your light using your sync cord for tak- ing measurements and the fourth mode is wireless radio triggering mode (4). The Sekonic C- 500R is compatible with the Pocket Wizard brand wireless remote triggering devices and this allows you to trigger your flash wirelessly to take measurements.

1 2 3 4

The next display mode is the LB CC filter mode. LB stands for a light balancing while CC stands for color correction and if you look at the display you can see that based on 1 the measurement I just took, the meter is recommending a .10 magenta filter and a 80D light balancing filter both of which would go on my camera lens.

This is most useful when you are shooting with film because digital cameras allow you to set the white balance directly on the camera to match the Kelvin temperature indicated by the meter.

The third display mode is the LB CC index display and this mode indicates which Lee lighting filters you should place on your lights so they match the ambient light color. Here you can see that the meter is recommending a Lee 54 lighting gel which I would then place on my strobes making them become the same Kelvin temperature as the ambient light source. In this case my strobes have now been filtered and will match the ambient light. The last display mode is the illuminance measurement (not pictured) and this indicates the brightness of con- tinuous light sources. This mode is most useful for cinematog- raphy and Videography and you can set this to show in either lux or foot candles for indicating the brightness.

Another thing I will mention regarding the measurement of strobes is the C-500R comes with two ranges, high and low. If you attempt to take a reading and you get a blinking error message saying "over" then you should move the meter from low range to high range. On the other hand, if you get a reading that says "under" you will need to go the other way, resetting the meter from high range to low range. To do that you press the menu button and then turn the jog wheel until the display shows SET RANGE and then press the measurement/okay button. Which ever range is currently set on the meter will begin to blink and you want to turn the jog wheel to the range you wish to use. Once selected push the measurement/okay button again and then the back button to re- turn to the measurement screen.

All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 22 Before we move on to using the meter in actual photography, there's one more important fea- ture on the C-500R that I want to mention. If you want to measure the difference between two light sources and determine what that difference is you can use the memory func- tion. Simply measure the first light source and enter that into memory by pushing the memory button. Then move to the next light source and press the measurement/okay button and the display will indicate the color temperature difference between these two light sources. This is quite useful in helping you determine not only the difference between the two sources, but will also help you determine which light source you may want to favor when setting your white balance.

Color Meter Summary Now that I've shown you the basic features of the Sekonic C500R let's put it to practical use. One of the easiest measurements is to take a reading of your ambient light source and you simply press the measurement button. Then I manually enter that into my camera's white balance settings allowing me to take a picture with my white balance set and it will be accurate.

If I am going to use the cord option to fire the strobes and I will plug my sync cord right into the Pro Digi and then hold the mode button while spinning the jog wheel over to the broken arrow with the letter C indicating the cord option. But before I take a reading I'm going to determine what my shutter speed should be. The reason is that the Pro Digi allows you to include ambient lighting along with your strobe color measurement. This is quite handy if you are shooting in a location where the ambient light and your strobe are pretty close in color or a compromise Kelvin temperature is acceptable.

Using your Camera as Color Meter You can use your camera as a rough color meter and specifically the process is fairly simple and this approach is only to aid in determining what gels your lights need. If you want to just get good overall color use CWB or AWB.

Note: Many cameras now will tell you in the metadata on the LCD screen what WB an AWB image chose so you would skip the following steps. If your camera is older it may not have that info and you have to open the RAW file on the computer.

Using your digital camera as a meter requires you to follow several steps:

1) Set the camera to AWB. 2) Take a test shot in RAW. 3) Open the image in Photoshop. (So you need a laptop if on location). 4) Open the image in Adobe Camera RAW and read the RAW dialog box under white balance it says AS SHOT. It also provides the color temperature that the image was shot at next to Temperature.

I may be the only one in the world advocating this approach and it is meant only to get you close when no meter is available. Keep in mind that this is good for a scene of even color but not for mixed light. If it is green on the left of the picture and red on the right side this overall approach will not provide a completely accurate WB. However, by using the approach in a scene of even color, you are able to match your lights to the ambient and then be close enough to adjust your raw file in Adobe Camera RAW.

Update: Newer digital cameras will now state the Kelvin temperature in the metadata of a captured raw file and you can access this right on the back of the camera.

This image is an example of one light source inside the room and where the camera as color meter would get you close. Sure, there is a window allowing in some window light but point your camera to the left and block out the window for your test shot to establish the best WB.

Lighting Gels Now that you understand how to correct for color imbalance, it’s time to introduce your strobe lights into the mix and this presents your next challenge. You have taken a color meter reading and change WB on your camera and now you have neutralized any ambient color shift.

Your strobes are balanced to daylight, so if you move them in and take your shot, they will not be the correct color. For example, if you set camera WB to Tungsten 3200K but dont gel the strobes to 3200k, they will remain 5500K and the light coming out of them will be blue, not amber.

To fix that you add filtration to your strobes to make them the same color as the ambient light so they match and then WB setting on the camera (3200K) now neutralizes the ambient light color and the strobes lights color for a neutral color balance. This is where you use Lee or Rosco color correction lighting gels to change the color of your lights.

The following gel numbers (next page) are for Rosco brand. Lighting gels. If the color temperature is 4400K for example, you set your WB to 4400K and place a Rosco 3409 and 3206 on each of your lights to make them 4400K. That’s because the 3409 is to amber so the blue 3206 takes a little amber out.

The next chart shows the lighting gels color and number. If you want to convert your strobe to Cool White Fluorescent you would place a 3304 Green over your light and if you want to make it tungsten light at 3200K, you add Amber 3407 to your light.

(3.4) Lighting Gels Color Lighting Gel_••••______Converts______Blue Tungsten to Daylight Blue 3204 ½ Blue Blue 3206 1/3 Blue Blue 3208 1/4 Blue Blue 3216 1/8BlueCTB Green 3304 Daylight to Cool White Fluorescent Green 3315 about half of above Amber 3401/3407 Full CTO, Daylight to Tungsten Amber 3408 ½ CTO Amber 3409 ¼ CTO Amber 3410 1/8CTO

The relationship of color wheel opposites works here as well. A blue 3202 is the opposite of Am- ber 3407 and Blue 3208 is the opposite of 3409, they cancel each other out. NOTE: 3401 and 3407 are virtually the same. They both convert daylight to tungsten. 3401 convert to 3200K while 3407 converts to 2900K.

The image above is a swatch book for Rosco gels and shows a variety of different colors. You pick from here and purchase larger sheets of the gels. Update: These above swatch books may still be available, but Rosco quit making them when a popular flash photography blog mentioned them and there was a massive run on them costing Rosco a lot of money. So they dropped the free swatch book. You can now buy the Strobist Gel Kit from most major camera stores and it contains the needed gels for your on-camera flash but wont work for strobes.

This next photo (left) shows the same photo with a White Balance (WB) setting for Fluorescent which I selected from the cameras Preset WB settings. It is pretty accurate, but still has a hint of Yellow/Green. F/8 @ ½ second. On the right, I set the camera up to take a custom white balance reading by reading off the white card in the foreground. (The image is slightly blurry.) The color balance is almost perfect and certainly close enough for most applications. F/8 @ ½ second.

Keep in mind it is one light source only and fixing color is easy.

Here the ambient light was read and set on the digital camera manual WB. Then the strobes were gelled to match the ambient light and the result is neutral color.

Here is the key point to understand: You read the ambient lights color, with the color meter or using a RAW capture, and then add lighting gels to the strobes so they are the same color as the ambient light. Then you add filtration to the lens (or set WB) to counter that color shift of the ambient/strobe so you have perfect color balance in your image.

The reason is that the (3.5) amber gels are more am- Ambient Set your Put these Color Temperature WB to this gels on your lights ber than needed, so by 3200K 3200K 3407 (Full Amber) combining a weaker blue 3500K 3500K 3407 (Full Amber) + 3208 (Blue) with the stronger amber, 3800K 3800K 3407 (Full Amber) + ½ 3208 you are weakening the 4100K 4100K 3408(1/2Amber)+3206(Blue) 4400K 4400K 3410(1/4Amber)+3206(Blue) ambers Kelvin tempera- 4700K 4700K 3410 (1/8 Amber) ture slightly to be more 5000K 5000K 3409(1/4Amber)+3206(Blue) precise with the WB. 5500K None 5800K 5800K Notenoughshifttobother 6100K 6100K 3208(1/4Blue) Gelling Light Fixtures 6400K 6400K 3208(1/4Blue) You can also take lighting 6700K 6700K 3206(1/3Blue) gels and convert lamps 7100K 7100K 3206(1/3Blue) and fixtures in your scene. 7500K 7500K 3204(1/2Blue) 8000K 8000K 3204(1/2Blue) Here is the same image 9000-10,000K Wayupthere 3202(FullBlue) see earlier. The kitchen 14,000+ Wayupthere3202(FullBlue) light is Cool White and I want the light to be equal throughout the room.

All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 30 The thing to do is to open that fixture and place inside it the 3310 gel and then close the fixture. This makes that Cool White fixture Tungsten in color. So the dining room is tungsten, the kitchen is now tungsten and all that remains is the blue from the window. I can control the exposure there with shutter speed thus regulating its influence on the scene. The next step is to add gels to the strobes and all light sources are the same color. Then set my WB to Tungsten and we are set to shoot. My preference is to leave tungsten lamps unfiltered because I think the warm glow that they emit gives a warm ambiance to the room. However, you very well may be asked to correct for these as well and I will wrap a small gel around them to correct the color and match the remain- ing lights. Many photographers also have portable flash/lamps that screw into the lamp fixture, but are actually a strobe with a slave built into them.

Color Management in the Real World Ok, you are sitting there thinking the heck with all this techno mumbo jumbo, I will correct in Raw Converter (ACR). Well can you? Maybe, maybe not! If the color shift for your entire scene is the same, then yes you can correct in ACR using the temperature slider. That is called a global adjust- ment.

All photos and text © Charlie Borland, all rights reserved worldwide. No form of reproduction or usage - including copying, altering, or saving of digital image and text files - is permitted without the express written permission of Charlie Borland Photography For Architecture and Real Estate Page 31 But, if your scene has windows with daylight coming in and a fluorescent fixture spilling green all over and a tungsten light in the back, then these ACR global corrections won’t do the job. OK, OK, OK, suuurrrre………you can make selections and change color in each of these areas that are off color, but this can be very difficult and time consuming. TIME IS MONEY! Besides, think about this: when you pour a can of blue paint into a can of red paint, where it mixes the color begins to change to magenta. In the middle it will be blue and the outer edges of the can will still be red, but where it mixes will begin to be magenta. The same theory works with light.

If you have amber tungsten light in one room and green fluorescent in another room, there will be another color where those two colors transition. Why not just gel the light sources and everything is balanced and the same, then you can fine tune with a global correction in ACR? Let’s get back to the camera as color meter. Newer digital cameras are now listing the Kelvin temperature in the metadata of a RAW file and you can access this info on your camera. Check your manual.

Once you have taken the test, look at the RAW image and determine the color temp. Using chart 3.6 (from lesson 7) determine what gel needs to go on each strobe to make them the same color as the ambient light. Then set up your lights as needed, adjust your manual WB to the Kelvin temp your test shot indicated, shoot one more test RAW file and preview. Does it all look balanced color wise? Now what do you do when you have a situation where you have the green fluorescent kitchen light, tungsten living room with a daylight window over on one side? If you have a color meter you would read the window area and set your camera WB to that. The reason is you cannot gel the window light like you can your strobes unless you spend a substantial amount of money buying roles of gels in many colors. Let’s say the color meter said 6000K at the window. Now gel your lights to be 6000K including the ones that will light the kitchen and the living room. Usually this works well if you now move all these 6000k gelled lights into each room, but can be a problem sometimes. Here again, are you allowing any of the ambient light into the scene? Why not just gel the lights and everything is balanced and the same, then you can fine tune with a global correction in ACR?

Putting it all together Now we’ll take a look at the situation I have used numerous times and similar to having the green fluorescent kitchen light, tungsten living room with a daylight window over on one side? If you have a color meter you would turn off all ceiling lights and then stand under the kitchen light and take a reading. This will tell you what is coming through the window. Now turn on the fluorescent light and read it. Next set you camera WB to that. The reason is you cannot gel the window light like you can your strobes. Let’s say the color meter said 4500K with ceiling light on. Now gel your lights to be 4500K.

Here are some examples of where the images could not be corrected with one global adjust- ment in ACR. Next to the camera are tungsten chandeliers. After reading the color temperature of the ambient light I weighed the color temperature towards the tungsten light and set my WB to 3500K and gelled the strobes as well to match. The top left image is the result-way to amber.

This was not the best analysis of the light temperature. First the color of the wall above the sink was not as green as it should be, such as indicated in the top right image which is weighed towards the fluorescent color. The metal fridge is very amber also in the top left image. In image 2 the green coming from the fluorescent changed the color of the cabinets from a Honey color to a green tinted blonde.

The solution here was to meter for the fluorescent and gel lights to match that reading. To the cameras right and out of view are tungsten lights and those needed to be turned off so only the strobes lit the scene on this end. The idea is to limit the amount of varied light sources by turning some off and using a faster shutter speed to minimize the window light as well.

The solution for the image was different filtration for each light. First I took a color meter reading right in next to the table. The strobes that were lighting the dining area here were then gelled to match that color temp in the dining room. There is light hitting the chairs at the kitchen counter so I metered there (a tungsten fluorescent mix) and gelled those lights to match that area. I then metered the kitchen with the window and fluorescent mix and gelled the lights to match that area. I next determined the average for the three color meter readings and then determined my white balance based on that reading where I then took the shot. Thank goodness Photoshop is my friend. I went in and created global color adjustments as close as I could and then made selections to the fridge to get it looking neutral and added warmth back into the cabinets. The process is to time consuming to explain it fully here, but you should have a goal of mastering PS as well. The real point however, is to get it right in the first place. This PS work required a lot of time and I was not paid for it. Why? Be- cause, I can light it correctly and because I failed to do it perfectly, the client shouldn’t pay for it.

Shock Assessment Now that you are totally bewildered and stunned at the perceived complexity of color management in lighting, take a deep breath and relax. How long until you are confronted with this type of a situation? Do you understand the theories presented here? Take your time and read this over many times if nec- essary until it makes better sense. Then go challenge yourself by practicing, because it makes perfect. Once this has sunk in, it will make perfect sense just like all the other aspects in photography that at one time, also were bewildering. Go to www.rosco.com to find a dealer for these gels. You can get the Sekonic Prodigi Color meter at B&H: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/558948 -REG/Sekonic_401_500_Prodigi_Color_C_500_Color.html/BI/7592/KBID/8120

Filtration was used on this image taken at dusk. I used the color meter to read the light where it had about half daylight and half the lights from under the canopy. You can do this in Camera RAW sliders but then you might have to guess what that color is. Or use the meter and do it in camera.

Summary

You have many options and I hope this lesson was clear on how each can work. Color is important and creating a natural color balance is important and should be your goal. And it does not have to be hard.

1) You can use AWB or CWB and then correct the off-color areas in Photoshop. 2) You can use a color meter for more precision color measurements. 3) You an use your RAW file test to establish the WB the camera selected if you have no color meter. 4) If you use strobes you can gel them to match the ambient light and then correct in camera with AWB.