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- Usman M. Bajwa

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How to adjust WB when shooting in Sodium Lights?


When it comes to shooting functions I am a total novice. My problems were exacerbated when in a recent wedding shoot of a relative in the night under the Sodium Lights, I tried my hand with my camera. I did shoot in both RAW and Jpeg modes but all of the images had a very yellowish color cast to them and true colors could not be achieved. I tried all the WB settings on my Nikon D40 and also tried correcting it in post-processing with RAW images, but still to no avail.
A friend of mine told me its just the way it is when shooting under the Sodium vapor lights. I think there must be some way of getting the right color under the circumstances. How does the pros do it while shooting weddings. Sitting perplexed!

UB.


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April 23, 2012

 
chrisbudny.com - Chris Budny

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  Usman, did you try any custom white balance settings during the RAW conversion? (Such as in Adobe Camera RAW, you can alter the Temperature slider, and the other---color or hue, can't remember what it is called.)


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April 23, 2012

 
- Usman M. Bajwa

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  Thanks Chris, I tried but even this won't completely remove the yellow hue. And Jpegs are a total waste :(

UB.


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April 25, 2012

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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  You sure they were sodium lights? It's kinda irrelevant because it's still about the yellow tint, regardless of where it's from. But I was just curious because those are usually used for street lights or softball/baseball fields.
Custom white balance may not work for everything because not each individual light will have the same color balance. Although I did look up sodium lights and the low pressure kind seems to have a narrow range of color temp. If your camera has a custom white balance where you use a shot of a white card taken in the light your shooting, use that to set the white balance. That's a possible option to trying to set white balance after shooting.
If you still get too much yellow, sometimes just going into 'hue/saturation' with photoshop and just desaturating or lightening the yellow will get closer to what you want.


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May 02, 2012

 
- Usman M. Bajwa

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  Gregory, the function was being held in the night under a yellowish canopy and on top of it they used the sodium lights, made the situation worse. I think my camera (Nikon D40) has the option of setting WB, however, I have never tried it yet. Never felt the need before as I shoot all my images in RAW and Jpeg and usually put the daylight WB option whenever I am shooting Outside. In this particular occasion, I tried all the modes of the WB present in the camera but none solved the problem.

UB.


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May 03, 2012

 
- Gregory LaGrange

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  If you can put in the time to color adjust each frame, you can also use the eye drop tool in either levels or curves to set your white point.
If you combine that with changing the white balance settings in the raw conversion, you might get close to what you're wanting.


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May 03, 2012

 
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