Helpful Reading

[DavidHernandez]

Here is an article that is worth reading. It may help you with your lighting and setup.

Dave.

www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/light.htm

[henryhyde]

Great article.

Thanks David.... I've been trying to build and effective lighting setup.

Cheers,
Henry

[wetowne]

Thanks Dave. Interesting reading. Good Stuff.

[henryhyde]

Most people who post here seem to be using "daylight balanced" bulbs....

Is there anyone using tungsten with the white balance set to compensate ?

Cheers,
Henry

[cinbobs48]

Hi Dave,

That is a great article. Mirrors I didn't think of that one!

- Bob

[DavidHernandez]

henryhyde:

Regarding Tungsten lights and white balance:

I've done this. For those of you wondering what he's asking, let me clarify...

"Tungsten" light comes from regular lightbulbs. Your eyes compensate for the color of light, so you will normally perceive light to be "white". In fact, the light from tungsten bulbs is very yellow, and in some cases almost red. This has to do with the "temperature" of the light. Light is measured in Kelvins (K). The lower the "K", the redder the light. The higher the K, the more white the light.

Light at noon on a clear day can be 7000K. Light at dawn can be 4000K. You can use this to get romantic or harsh lighting as you desire.

Flash photography produces a temperature of about 6000k, which mimics natural light, but tungsten bulbs produce light at about 3500K. Thus, tungsten lighting is "yellow", or "golden".

A digital camera can compensate for the color of the light when you tell it to do so (by manipulating the White Balance setting). A regular film camera can compensate by using special film ("tungsten balanced film").

With a digital camera working under tungsten light, you can set the white balance to "tungsten" and the camera will compensate for the yellow color of the light. It may assume that the light is coming in at 3,500K, so there may still be a golden cast to your photos if the light is cooler.

Some digital cameras allow you to set the K value. For example, my Canon 10d lets me specify a number between ~2300K and higher. I typically use the lowest K value when shooting under tungsten because the white balance looks better than the automatic setting.

Most digital cameras will also allow you to set a "custom white balance". You do this by pointing the camera at a white card or paper (whatever is "white" under the lighting you have to work with) and then setting the camera to recognize that item as "white". The CCD will then compensate for the temperature of the light.

You don't have to shoot under flash or daylight compensated bulbs. You can use the settings in the camera to compensate. However, my preference is to control the light source so that the camera does not have to make adjustments that I can only control to a certain point. The more control you have, the better your photos will be.

You can also shoot under tungsten without any adjustments to the white balance in order to get a "romantic" golden glow to your images.

Experiment with this and you may be very pleased with the resulting images you take.

Dave.