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Photography Question 

Delano A. Porchia
 

blue glow from flurescent lights


When doing a wedding a churches that use fluorescent lights, I sometimes notice that there will be a blue glow around the subject. Are there any filers can use, or what I can use to eliminate that? I usually due custom white balances, but that does not always eliminate the blue glow. What can I due?


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April 11, 2006

 

BetterPhoto Member
 
 
 
There are flourescent balancing filters on the market. You may want to invest in one. Flourescent light usually throws a green tint into a photograph. I'm not sure why you're getting blue.


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April 11, 2006

 

Delano A. Porchia
  The tint may be green. Thanks for the advice.


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April 11, 2006

 

Justin G.
  You said "custom white balances" which leads me to believe you're shooting digital. When you pull up your file in PP, adjust your WB until the green cast is gone. It will probably fall under florescent somewhere. That's what's so lucky for people who shoot digital. Adjust you're white balance later to whatever you desire!


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April 11, 2006

 

Mark Feldstein
  Greetings Delano. There are a lot of different types of flourescent tubes around. Some look green, yellow green, pink (or try to impersonate daylight) or blue blue/green. So, unless you actually know what kind of tubes you're working against, you can buy one of the ready-made flourescent correction filters (that will help correct them back to daylight (5500 degrees Kelvin) and there are a couple of those around. They won't give you perfect color balance but ballpark.

Of course another alternative is as Justin suggested, the digital fix, which I guess is fairly straightforward.

But for those shooting film, the hot set-up is to use a color temperature meter (expensive investment) to calculate the correction in terms of color compensating filters (which are pretty pricey).

Lastly, one trick I've used fairly amount is to use my studio strobes in open reflectors to wash the ceiling with daylight and basically override the effect of the flourescent tubes. How many strobes you'd need depends on their power output. Generally, this doesn't work well with small, on-camera flash units.

Take it light.
Mark


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April 11, 2006

 

Jim M. White
  Delano,
Shoot AWB and include a gray target in the first shot of any series you shoot under each lighting condition. If you shoot RAW you can use the WB tool to color correct the whole batch with that one shot. Even with JPEG high you can batch color correct using curves in PS with that gray target.


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April 12, 2006

 

Delano A. Porchia
  Hi Mark and Jim,

Thanks for your feed back. I will give all these options a try to see what works best.


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April 13, 2006

 
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