Help on avoiding colour casting appreciated - some examples

[simon007]

took some images of a friend of mine the other day,
mixed results, the wb can be difficult to get right
in certain situations.

Here you go, some images: 1st one original, 2nd with auto correction

[Marko]

ohh these are strong casts....even the corrected version is very magenta.
Question 1 - are you shooting these with AWB (automatic white balance) - if not what balance are you using?
Question 2 - what is the predominant light source here (window light?) Are there additional light sources?

[Iguanasan]

I'd love to help but I'd have to know a little more about the reason for the colour cast. There's no EXIF information in the images so it would be good to know the following before trying to help.

1) Camera?
2) Did you use a flash?
3) What caused the orange cast? Was it the colour of the setting sun or was she in an orange room?
4) Is this a digital shot or a film shot scanned in?
5) How was your white balance set?

Also, try and post an image that is less than 275KB and less than 1025 pixels or the board software will resize it which makes it even harder to see what's going on.

[simon007]

Camera CANON 450D
White Balance ( trying different settings )
Digital photo resized for the forum
Bright sun, red carpect and mixed colours
tried to use on camera flash, slave flashgun
generally i mixed things to try and get a good outcome

[simon007]

Exif data



below 2 images just showing the room used

[Marko]

This is only part of the answer and what you have posted is only a small part of the exif data- we need to know what balance was used or this is just speculation on our parts.
This info is embedded in the digital file. I use the camera raw pluggin to see settings like this.

Bright sun is daylight and flash is usually balanced close to daylight so in that case auto white balance or a daylight setting would have been best for this image.
If you shot under a light source that does not at all match the setting you choose for the colour balance - then these completely off results make perfect sense....but we cannot help you decipher them.

What balance was used is ESSENTIAL to learn from errors. We can't tell you what you did wrong if you can't tell us the balance.
If you put the card in the camera, you should also be able to see what the balance used was by way of an icon that will likely indicate this. Consult your manual go this info if it isn't clear.

What seems clear to me is that this was shot under the wrong colour balance.....

"mixing to get a good outcome" will take you much longer to learn this concept imo than matching light source to colour balance.
Hope that may help.

[Marko]

To CORRECT these casts....shoot in RAW not jpeg as casts are easier to correct in Raw.
The image in shot 5 looks correctly balanced.

[simon007]

Would a high setting be a problem for WB?

[Marko]

what's a high setting? shutterspeed, flash-sync speed?
If so, not as far as i know.

If the olden days we shot film and it was balanced for the light source - this has nothing to do with anything other than the light sources in the image.
The same principal holds for digital as far as i know.

[kat]

Marko, do you have a podcast on auto-balance? I personally shoot in raw and honestly never play with my balance. I know I should but to be honest..even if I shot in auto-balance, it's not too often I get such a yellow balance.