I am a professional photographer. I shoot with canons, Mark II mainly. I color balance every shoot with a digital grey card. I have done a few tank shots and I am having a very difficult time obtaining a true color balance. As a portrait photographer, I have no experience shooting through glass, water, and crazy lighting. I retouch in PS, but would like to be a little closer to the mark before hand. Does anyone have any good tips?
Color Balance??
- Thread starter highfyre
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jwedehase
New member
Welcome to Reef Central!
The issue here is the white balance, and that most tanks are running 10000 Kelvin lighting, at the lowest end. Most are running 14000K, and a whole lot of them are running 20000K. Portrait photography is typically ... 5600-6700K, on the cool end, maybe? Correct me, if I'm wrong.
Obviously, no film is rated for this lighting. Additionally, I don't know of a single digital sensor than can WB beyond 10000K. The shots are always going to come out blue, and that's all there is to it. There are a couple ways to deal with this, all in post processing. Lots of people shoot in RAW format, then correct the WB later. This works well, but I've personally decided to stick with the old, classic: dig into the color sliders in Photoshop. The most effective for me is to complete all the post processing, bumping up saturation, bringing up the deep shadows, and all that normal stuff. Then, I'll selectively kill off the blue hue with the Hue/Saturation window by selecting the offending color (often found in the sand shadows) and bringing down both the "lightness" and the "saturation" of that color, in particular.
That's the super brief version, of course. The even shorter answer is "It's corrected in Photoshop." The best way to learn is to start digging in, and see what happens. My methods change often, as I learn better ways toward greater color accuracy. In the end, my goal is to create a photo that looks like what I see with my eye.
The issue here is the white balance, and that most tanks are running 10000 Kelvin lighting, at the lowest end. Most are running 14000K, and a whole lot of them are running 20000K. Portrait photography is typically ... 5600-6700K, on the cool end, maybe? Correct me, if I'm wrong.
Obviously, no film is rated for this lighting. Additionally, I don't know of a single digital sensor than can WB beyond 10000K. The shots are always going to come out blue, and that's all there is to it. There are a couple ways to deal with this, all in post processing. Lots of people shoot in RAW format, then correct the WB later. This works well, but I've personally decided to stick with the old, classic: dig into the color sliders in Photoshop. The most effective for me is to complete all the post processing, bumping up saturation, bringing up the deep shadows, and all that normal stuff. Then, I'll selectively kill off the blue hue with the Hue/Saturation window by selecting the offending color (often found in the sand shadows) and bringing down both the "lightness" and the "saturation" of that color, in particular.
That's the super brief version, of course. The even shorter answer is "It's corrected in Photoshop." The best way to learn is to start digging in, and see what happens. My methods change often, as I learn better ways toward greater color accuracy. In the end, my goal is to create a photo that looks like what I see with my eye.
use the grey card just like you do for your other shoots. Custom white balance the camera to your tank. then the shots you take will be true to life color just as you see it
My nikon I have custom white balanced to both my current 10k's and previous 14k's I used to run and it worked just fine.
I did have a heck of a time getting the card/sample under the light right and have the camera accept it though......its a two person job
My nikon I have custom white balanced to both my current 10k's and previous 14k's I used to run and it worked just fine.
I did have a heck of a time getting the card/sample under the light right and have the camera accept it though......its a two person job
Phyl
New member
Not true at all. Most digital cameras worth their salt will enable the photog to take a custom white balance that will capture the true colors of the tank. You can either use your gray card or find a similar patch of rock and do a custom WB on that.
Once you do that, if you can save the setting all the better. Then you don't have to do again next time.
Be sure to shoot straight through the glass, no angle. That will help a LOT.
This is all kinda what I have figured. A littel work in the begining with the card, and a little in PS. I guess its just oing to come down to a lot of playing with the camera, card and computer. Thanks for your help. Oh... and my grey card is plastic to and I just put it right inside the tank.
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