Help on avoiding colour casting appreciated - some examples

[Iguanasan]

I have a Canon 450D as well (XSi) so I'm familiar with the camera and the settings. I use automatic white balance 99% of the time and the camera is usually pretty close. I can adjust the WB in post since I shoot RAW for the few times when the camera gets confused by the lighting in the room. Refer to page 90 of your manual for setting the white balance on your 450D.

What editing programs are you using? There should be a setting there that lets you save your EXIF with the photo or copy the EXIF to the clipboard or something. There's no EXIF in the images you are posting so something is stripping it out. As Marko points out, it's hard without that White Balance detail to figure out what the issue was.

[simon007]

I have a Canon 450D as well (XSi) so I'm familiar with the camera and the settings. I use automatic white balance 99% of the time and the camera is usually pretty close. I can adjust the WB in post since I shoot RAW for the few times when the camera gets confused by the lighting in the room. Refer to page 90 of your manual for setting the white balance on your 450D.

What editing programs are you using? There should be a setting there that lets you save your EXIF with the photo or copy the EXIF to the clipboard or something. There's no EXIF in the images you are posting so something is stripping it out. As Marko points out, it's hard without that White Balance detail to figure out what the issue was.

Iguanasan,

When Sunlight comes though windows the intensity often changes,
I used when taking the images, ON CAMERA flash ( with/out slave flashgun ),
sometimes just the flashgun on the camera ( ttl and manual mode ) bouncing the flash sideways, upwards.
I changed the wb balance to FLASH, SHADE to try and counter changes to room temp.
I currently using a free open source program to edit my images
PAINT.NET ( there masses of plugins for this software )
ADOBE Photoshop ( very costly ), alternatives maybe Corel Paint Shop Pro or Serif Photo Plus

When I transfer my images to the computer I just pop the SDHC card into my reader and copy it to another folder.

MARKO in regard ISO, a high one being 800.

[kat]

ISO 800 would give you noise (color noise for me on my camera) if anything. But that color noise wouldn't be the overall yellow.

[kat]

The first two images. Is the first one an automatic white balance or a changed one?

[Iguanasan]

Iguanasan,

When Sunlight comes though windows the intensity often changes,
I used when taking the images, ON CAMERA flash ( with/out slave flashgun ),
sometimes just the flashgun on the camera ( ttl and manual mode ) bouncing the flash sideways, upwards.
I changed the wb balance to FLASH, SHADE to try and counter changes to room temp.
I currently using a free open source program to edit my images
PAINT.NET ( there masses of plugins for this software )
ADOBE Photoshop ( very costly ), alternatives maybe Corel Paint Shop Pro or Serif Photo Plus

When I transfer my images to the computer I just pop the SDHC card into my reader and copy it to another folder.

MARKO in regard ISO, a high one being 800.

If you are not "married" to that particular photo editing tool, I'd recommend Gimp if you want to stay low cost (free). You can see more on a blog post I wrote for Photography.ca - Photo Editing On The Cheap by Glenn Euloth | Photography.ca

It is difficult to suggest changes until we know exactly how each shot was taken. For instance you mention the flash bounced sideways. If you bounced flash off the red brick wall that might account for some colour cast. If you set the WB to FLASH and then shot with mostly sunlight through the window that might account for it as well.

You might consider just trying the following and check your results. Try to set up the same shot... same time of day, etc. to get the lighting conditions as close as possible to the original. Shoot in AWB mode and then try again without making any other adjustments other than the white balance.

Also, if you could post the original, un-edited, JPEG image somewhere (or do you shoot RAW?) then we can look at the EXIF in the file and see most of what we need to see.

[simon007]

original photo, no editing/resizing

[Iguanasan]

Gaak! Still no EXIF. Marko, does the board software trash the EXIF when it resizes? Hmmm... If you want to track this down further, Simon you can email me the image. Use my handle, iguanasan. Then address it to that at gmail. (sorry, trying to be cryptic to avoid the SPAM bots). I hope that it makes sense.

[Marko]

Board software does not strip exif data as far as I know....but none of my Chrome extensions are working these days - so I'm having a pain with this also.

Simon - Just put the card back into the camera if the file is still on the card. Then look at your manual to figure out how to read the exif data. 800 iso has nothing to do with colour balance. To me this cast is severe enough that if I were a betting dude, I'd bet you simply forgot which wrong white balance setting you played with for this image.

Kat - white balance podcast is a great idea. On the list it is.

[simon007]

Thanks everyone for your input.......

Found this site/url.........

last image on this page, shows issues with tungsten.......

White Balance Examples
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/whit...tm#application
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/whitebalance.htm

The other links provide a nice read

[Iguanasan]

Here's the EXIF... IrfanView is a free download which lets you copy the EXIF to the clipboard... handy feature...


Make - Canon
Model - Canon EOS 450D
Orientation - Top left
XResolution - 72
YResolution - 72
ResolutionUnit - Inch
DateTime - 2012:04:02 10:37:55
YCbCrPositioning - Co-Sited
ExifOffset - 196
ExposureTime - 1/100 seconds
FNumber - 3.50
ExposureProgram - Shutter priority
ISOSpeedRatings - 800
ExifVersion - 0221
DateTimeOriginal - 2012:04:02 10:37:55
DateTimeDigitized - 2012:04:02 10:37:55
ComponentsConfiguration - YCbCr
ShutterSpeedValue - 1/99 seconds
ApertureValue - F 3.51
ExposureBiasValue - 1
MeteringMode - Partial
Flash - Flash not fired, compulsory flash mode
FocalLength - 50 mm
UserComment -
SubsecTime - 41
SubsecTimeOriginal - 41
SubsecTimeDigitized - 41
FlashPixVersion - 0100
ColorSpace - sRGB
ExifImageWidth - 2256
ExifImageHeight - 1504
InteroperabilityOffset - 9506
FocalPlaneXResolution - 2569.48
FocalPlaneYResolution - 2575.34
FocalPlaneResolutionUnit - Inch
CustomRendered - Normal process
ExposureMode - Auto
White Balance - Manual
....

So, from this it looks like your white balance was set to some manual setting whereby it could have been set to anything which explains the colour cast. Since you are shooting JPG mode you can't really fix it though you can adjust it. JPEGs are already "baked" but if you were shooting RAW, a fair bit more complicated and I wouldn't switch unless you are very comfortable with it, you can set the white balance after the fact though it's always better to get it right in-camera.