D3 and Filters

On 2008-04-18, Tully Albrecht wrote:
On 2008-04-18 07:25:58 -0700, Chris Savage
said:

On 2008-04-18, C J Campbell wrote:
On 2008-04-17 15:14:35 -0700, Chris Savage
said:

On 2008-04-17, C J Campbell wrote:
Neither is it possible to correct white balance in software and get the
same results as getting white balance right in the first place. You can
sometimes get pretty close, but it is definitely not the same.

Can you tell me why you say this is, please? I can't find any reason to
believe that I can't fix my white balance in post-process.

http://savvo.wordpress.com/2008/04/1...-in-raw-files/


Somehow you have to get all these light sources to work together. You
want the basketball player to have good skin tones. You want his socks
white. You want the background sky to have a gorgeous sunset tone. You
want the subway car interior to look realistic.

Or you can simply put full green filters on your strobes and a #30
magenta filter on your lens. Works every time. And you don't have to
spend all day in front of your computer. Instead, you can go out and
take more pictures.

OK, sorry. So you're talking about balancing mixed light temperatures. That
wasn't clear to me, and in that case you are, of course right that it's
only feasible to fix that at shooting time. Although _exactly_ matching
your filters to your lighting temperatures is going to take more time
and equipment than is available on any shoot I've ever been on.


The wild card in all of this is fluorescent. In the days b.d.c. (before
digital capture) we futzed around with compensating filters for
avoiding the corpse-like hues in skin tones under office-type lighting.

I had a light box with Grow-Lux lights (in a studio) that actually did
a nice job on Caucasian skin, but the real problem comes from a mix of
fluorescent tubes of various color temps. Commercial buildings often
mix "cool white" with "warm white" or whatever they're officially
branded, and then as they age you end up with a whole spectrum of
(typically quite nasty) illumination. Trying to use filtration to tame
that beast is a fool's errand. Much better to turn off the ceiling
lights, try to get at least some window light in there, use strobes
with bounce/diffusion, and shoot daylight film.

Or ignore the fluorescents, shoot for the daylight, fill with a little
strobe...
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3225/2423635236_9997b5ab70_o.jpg
Works just as well with digital as film.


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