Color temperature and white balance challenges
I would like to see how many struggle with color temp/ white balance issues due to non color-corercted bounce material and ambient light from green grass, etc.
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4 Comments
Forgot to mention, lighting is all Speedo Blackline with various V-flats and large diffusers to soften shadows. Even the occasional hand held flash on a pocket wizard for closet fill and deep shadow areas.
It sounds like you're asking how others deal with color casts?
Your v-flat solution seems like it works, but I imagine overly complicated on what looks to be real estate. Usually bouncing off ceilings / corners or flashing the windows (when bouncing isn't an option) to blend in the views will suffice. At that point fixing any leftover color casts in post isn't too hard. There are a few ways I deal with those:
1. In PS, Create a new layer, set to Color Blend Mode, sample the ideal color and brush over the color cast area.
2. In PS, Create a HSL layer, desaturate, blend in.
3. In LR, use the Adjustment Brush or Radial Filter to create localized white balance adjustments.
The amount of color cast left in the final shots really is a personal preference. To be less subjective about it, grab similar architectural photos you really like and compare side by side with yours at the same time. Your preferences will become more obvious.
That sounds like sounds advice, however I do not shoot real estate. Setting up v- flats and strobes is par for the course when shooting high budget architectural for publications and design/builders. I sometimes do find keeping true color rendition to be a challenge. But I appreciate your input.
I always have a piece or a couple pieces of foam core for a fill bounce when I don't have a neutral surface I pair with a 1/8th cto correction ( I guess thats what you are referring to with v-flats) I also gel the strobes that I use in the space as needed. The green tint builders like to use on their windows used to really mess with me as well but I've gotten pretty good at the right balance of strobe to ambient using large soft lighting. Most of my shots don't have much ambient in them due to, I can't control the weather or my clients schedule. The rest is done in processing. I use C1 just for this reason it can really fine tune your color corrections. I used to do it the way Edward suggested but in-between taking the time to gel my lights on site and C1 I've cut my processing time in half.