Please Help me salvage a orchid show shoot

Bad coloration with my D-90: White Balance issue?

I took it to an local orchid show yesterday hoping for the best. Because the plants/flowers were largely illuminated by spotlights & lamps, when those pictures were reviewed at home full screen on a 23 inch HD monitor it was apparent the colors were inaccurate and way off.

Purple proved to be a tough color to capture and for the most part generally the coloration looked red, orange, yellow & dirty brownish instead of being natural & vibrant which orchids are! I attribute this unfortunate result to a white balance problem as I had it on automatic. The type of lights used is a mystery.

So, I only have tomorrow to do a re-shoot before the event ends.

Please, what tips & advice would you pass on to increase the probability that the lights and environment won’t destroy the natural color so I get some nice shots?

Obviously, the white balance setting needs to be set on something else….but what?

I dial in the “temperature” via the K setting, based on the above how to I compensate for the saturation I got yesterday.

All suggestions and advice welcome on how to make this effort a successful one.

Thank you.

You can set the white balance to a white card in the existing light, or even better, shoot raw and manipulate the wb to your hearts' content after shooting.

Check your manual and good luck!
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Z-Man

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Z-Man

You can be sure almost all of the shots used flash!!

Yes, hence my other post about JPEG vs RAW which is why I asked about it too.

I'm willing to explore all options but only have a few hours befoe I try again.

It would really help if you posted the photo. Orchids are tough.

new d 90 owner said:

Bad coloration with my D-90: White Balance issue?

I took it to an local orchid show yesterday hoping for the best. Because the plants/flowers were largely illuminated by spotlights & lamps, when those pictures were reviewed at home full screen on a 23 inch HD monitor it was apparent the colors were inaccurate and way off.

Purple proved to be a tough color to capture and for the most part generally the coloration looked red, orange, yellow & dirty brownish instead of being natural & vibrant which orchids are! I attribute this unfortunate result to a white balance problem as I had it on automatic. The type of lights used is a mystery.

So, I only have tomorrow to do a re-shoot before the event ends.

Please, what tips & advice would you pass on to increase the probability that the lights and environment won’t destroy the natural color so I get some nice shots?

Obviously, the white balance setting needs to be set on something else….but what?

I dial in the “temperature” via the K setting, based on the above how to I compensate for the saturation I got yesterday.

All suggestions and advice welcome on how to make this effort a successful one.

Thank you.

Click to expand...

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OK, not so purely a hobby.

. . . is an absolute must!!!

If you normally shoot only JPEG and not familiar with RAW . . . then you could also shoot RAW + JPEG.

It sounds like you are going to have probs with your white balance with your shoot tomorrow . . . and shooting RAW will give you the best chance in post production of correcting white balance . . . you can adjust RAW file to set the WB exactly where you want it . . . you can't do that with JPEGs.

Get it as close as you can with your shoot . . . then adjust in PP as necessary.

Good luck with it!

Rock

Dear new d 90 owner,

You have two options here. 1. Shoot in RAW and adjust the WB later 2. Adjust your kelvin value and take trial shots before taking the final picture.

I don't know how bad is the lighting here. But you may also try the daylight and flash WB to see if that's giving you some good results.

Also make sure to change your shooting angle to avoid too much confusing light into the sensor.

Hope this helps! . Don't forget to share some pictures.

Liju Augustine
Learning by sharing - http://lfotos.wordpress.com

If I shoot RAW in the morning for the benefits described, is there any low cost or reasonably priced software you'd recommend to fix the white balance/coloration accuracy issue that even a newbie editor could post process with and understand?

Definitely do not want to repeat what happened on Friday!

This show only comes around once a year and tommorow is it!

Shoot in raw - that way, the setting of the camera's white balance becomes academic. With all of the information from the sensor having been preserved, you can set the white balance to whatever temperature you want in postprocessing and, of course, you can push or pull the exposure a little bit if needs be

I hope the picture attached gives you all an idea as there is a lot going on here colorwise.

You can't help but notice for exampler the dirty brown color of the wall which in actuality is a cream white!

The shooting environment is tough for sure.

Lighting is a killer.

Photoshop Elements would work fine if you download ACR from PhotoShop. Then when you open the file with Photoshop Elements then ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) will load it and allow you to make changes.
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As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
-- Max Ehrmann

As mentioned PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS is available and does about 90% of what the full blown commercial PHOTOSHOP does . . . and it is only about 80 bucks at various outlets such as AMAZON.

I think there is a free trial version of ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS5 that you could also download to try out the full blown PHOTOSHOP . . . perhaps there is a trial version of ELEMENTS also.

The key issue is to make sure you record in RAW . . . then you have the file for evermore . . . and you can tweak and adjust to your heart's content . . . and again if you are more comfortable with JPEGs the record RAW + JPEG and you will have both types of files recorded . . . with the RAW file giving you the most latitude for future adjustment.

If you are in a time element to process and produce images online or prints . . . then you will have to learn the basics of post processing in a hurry!

It is actually a fairly simple process to use the ADOBE CAMERA RAW function in either PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS or PHOTOSHOP CS5 . . . and you can very simply do basic white balance and exposure type adjustments very easily and quickly.

Concentrate on your exposure, depth of field, and focus so that you get the best file to work with as when recording in RAW you can very easily adjust and tweak the white balance in post processing.

If shooting flash set your camera White Balance setting to flash and if not shooting flash set it to whatever gets you closest to the actual coloring.

Make sure you record in RAW . . . and adjust as necessary in post processing.

Good luck with it!

Rock

Shoot RAW. Use ViewNX for free to fix WB. Nothing does it better.
Got a grey card to shoot under the same lights.

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Everything happens for a reason. #1 reason: poor planning
WSSA #44

If the images are important you have to be in complete control of the camera, otherwise Nikon's mechanical and software engineers are making the decisions that you should be making. That means auto-ISO off, auto-WB off and maybe even auto-focus off (especially if you are coming in close)

You said you used flash. What kind? I would use an external unit, probably SB800 in TTL mode (not TTL BL) - you need to rule out the ambient light. I would shoot RAW and fix any minor WB issues in Nikon Capture but NX is OK too, and free.

David

at least get a starting point with the shots you've already taken, one-click will give you this...and it's free.



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dave

Just got to have DXO and Lightroom.





Lightroom can fix just about anything!

I made a couple of quick adjustments in PSE-8 (Photoshop Elements 8), but I don’t know that the result is any better than what Cedarhill or Reilly achieved. One problem is that no one here was at the Orchid show and we don’t know what the colors should look like. What I did was use Levels and the Black, Midtone, and White eyedroppers to set the corresponding points in the image, but I don’t know what would be a good midtone in your picture.

The most economical way to start with RAW is ViewNX2, which is free from http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/Imaging-Software/NVNX2/ViewNX-2.html . ViewNX2 is not a full blown photo editing tool, but it will do most of the basics such as adjusting exposure, White Balance, Sharpening, etc. and it does a reasonably decent job of cataloging your images, especially if you use Nikon Transfer (also free). I have both PSE-8 and LR 3 (Lightroom 3) but I generally use Nikon Transfer to download, with a card reader, my files to my computer and initially cull them with ViewNX2 before importing them to LR 3. I use PSE-8 when I want to adjust photos like yours, something I don’t want in my catalog of photos.

PSE-9 sells for $99.99 from Adobe but currently comes with $20 mail-in rebate; shop around and you can find it cheaper. For me I don’t see a reason to upgrade from PSE-8 to PSE-9 and if you check out the changes and feel that PSE-8 would work for you, PSE-8 is still available (Office Depot is selling it for $59.95 and you might find it even cheaper). I’d stronly recommend Scott kelby’s “the photoshop elements# book for digital photographers”; I have never found any photo editing software that is really intuitive, you will need help to learn how to use what ever you decide on. Adobe has a huge following and Adobe TV ( http://tv.adobe.com/ ) has some great video tutorials and so does YouTube.

If you or anyone in your household is a student or faculty member you can buy Adobe Educational software – it is full featured, but much cheaper. Corel’s Paintshop Photo Pro X3 is also popular and runs about $50.

I recommend that you start with the free Nikon ViewNX2, and then download a trial version of one of the other editors. Remember there is a learning curve involved with all editing software, don’t try them all at once, you’ll just get really confused.





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Amateurs change camera settings to match the light; Pro’s change the light to match their needs.

Brooks
http://bmiddleton.smugmug.com/