Still playing catch-up on my posts. This is from Tuesday when I spent a great amount of time trying to figure out why the color in these two images look so dramatically different from two different cameras when they had the exact same settings (ISO, White balance, shutter speed, and aperture). The one from the much less expensive Canon Digital Rebel is actually the correct color, but for some reason, when I use a blue gel on a black background, my Nikon D100 captures it as purple. If anyone out there has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
3 comments:
Jerry, I'd call it a white balance issue- which wouldn't be surprising since it doesn't much matter what level the camera is (some pocket point-n-shoots do better than DSLRs). I've never played with gelled studio heads, but that would definitely be a difficult situation for the auto-white balance setting to figure out. Was it set on auto-WB or was it a custom WB setting? If it was on auto, I believe the Nikon may have incremental adjustments and you may be able to "cool" the setting by using something like auto+3 (sorry, I'm not a Nikon user). Maybe the best way is the way Mike Adkins does it- tether the camera to a laptop and adjust the WB exposure with test shots or maybe just eliminate the in-camera processing by using strictly raw and fix it there. You've posed a pretty interesting question, since I've ordered some gels for my flash.
Thinking a bit more about it, I'd be surprised if both shots had turned out the same, no matter if you had them set on auto or a custom balance such as "flash" since the color temperatures vary and manufacturers make a compromise. Did you try setting a custom balance with a gray card for each camera so they are both at the same color temperature?
Thanks, Mark
I haven't tried using a gray card, which is a good idea because one would think it would have to be some type of white balance issue.
The setting I used on that particular shot was sunny, because that's what the lights are set to simulate (which is also what the Canon was set on). However, I shot photos with every white balance setting I had and got the same result (or at least some variation of purple).
I have been shooting RAW and fixing the problem in Lightroom or Aperture, but it's a hassle to have to do that all the time.
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