White Balance with Flash and Video light

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Cressida

I mostly do wedding photography but with the video light on (1000 watt) of the videographer the bride's dress appear too warm or too bluish when I change the settings. I have tried various white balance settings and have clicked thousand of pictures with a model wearing white wedding gown and with video light on. I just can't get the correct colour.

Will photographers in this forum who do wedding photography side by side a videographer with video light (1000 watt) tip me how to get white colour of the white bridal gown.

I have not tried white balance with Grey Card. Someone also please tell me where in India I can buy a Grey card or from outside India a store that will courier me a Grey card.

Thanks in advance.

My gear is D200 17-55 SB800.

shoot RAW and change later.
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the only good answer to mixed lighting color balance is not to use mixed lighting..

an orange filter (CTO color temperature orange) on your flash will bring the flash color to balance with the video light...

balance for that (or shoot raw and do it post processing) and no problem

The SB800 comes with two filters made for the inevitable mixed lighting situations that wedding shooters encounter. One is for flourescent - it's kind of a bluish-green filter. Put it on the SB800, and shoot away, the SB800 will be very close to the general color temp of commercial flourescent lighting.

The other filter is kind of reddish orange, and is for incandescent - like the video light. It will match your flash color reasonably close to a halogen or regular incandescent light.

The solution that a lot of people believe will work - shoot raw, fix it later - has one very ugly problem. The highlights will be the color temp of the brightest source, the shadows the color temp of the dimmest source. You can't color balance an image like that fast enough to make any money on a shoot, and some will never look right. You see posts on here all the time - "I can't get the color balance right" and it's always a mixed lighting, highlights/shadows problem. It CAN be done, if you want to mask the different areas and color balance shadows and highlights differently. Got a spare half hour per image? You'll also get foreground/background color balance differences to make your life more interesting.

I've experienced a hugely heinous situation a couple of times - the video light, plus strobe, plus a room lit by flourescent lights. The only thing that works then to get clean color balance is prayer...

your mixing two color temperature-white points.
throw in the sun thru the church window, and you have another source.

the only way to fix that in post processing is with lots of selections in photoshop,

so to save a ton of work on post, you have to get the initial lighting equalized with filters

in a perfect world, you could hand the videographer a blue filter for his light, he adjusts his camera's gain and white point, and both parties are in harmony,

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Cressida

Thanks everyone of input particularly Ednaz. I will try with the flash filter for my next wedding shoot.