Why did the black background turn brown: The shot was taken with the only light source as a candle three inches behind Christ's head and about six inches or so from the back ground.

tramsey Loc: Texas

The shot was taken with the only light source as a candle three inches behind Christ's head and about six inches or so from the back ground. Why did the black background which is black board especially made to create a black background. So on a retake what do I do different to maintain the black color

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

tramsey wrote:

The shot was taken with the only light source as a candle three inches behind Christ's head and about six inches or so from the back ground. Why did the black background which is black board especially made to create a black background. So on a retake what do I do different to maintain the black color

Color temperature of candle. Adjust color temperature and back ground will go black

Haydon

I suggest you needed to make the appropriate white balance correction according to the environment. You could set a custom white balance to candle temperature which seems to differ from site to site but work with 1000-2000K and see what works. A color checker passport would be ideal if you could get a neutral exposure.

BebuLamar

Candle light has very low color temperature and for many cameras even lowest setting is still too high. The background although black but it's lighted and the foreground is not. So if you render the background black you won't be able to see the face.

tramsey Loc: Texas

PixelStan77 wrote:

Color temperature of candle. Adjust color temperature and back ground will go black

Thanks for the quick comeback. I will give that a try on the retake. thanks again.

tramsey Loc: Texas

BebuLamar wrote:

Candle light has very low color temperature and for many cameras even lowest setting is still too high. The background although black but it's lighted and the foreground is not. So if you render the background black you won't be able to see the face.

The camera is an old nikon p510 and I don't think it has the capability to do what I want to do Thanks for the quick reply

tramsey Loc: Texas

PixelStan77 wrote:

Color temperature of candle. Adjust color temperature and back ground will go black

I don't think I can go low enough. The camera is a nikon p510

tramsey Loc: Texas

BebuLamar wrote:

Candle light has very low color temperature and for many cameras even lowest setting is still too high. The background although black but it's lighted and the foreground is not. So if you render the background black you won't be able to see the face.

I'm used to shooting with my Nikon 7200 but it is in the shop. This was done with an old Nikon P510 and I don't think it has the capability that I'm looking for. Thanks for the reply.

tramsey Loc: Texas

BebuLamar wrote:

Candle light has very low color temperature and for many cameras even lowest setting is still too high. The background although black but it's lighted and the foreground is not. So if you render the background black you won't be able to see the face.

I'm going to experiment a little with different settings and p/s

R.G. Loc: Scotland

You can have either light or no light, where no light = black. As soon as there's visible light you have something that's not black. In your pic the candle is giving off yellow/orange light and that's what's reflecting off of the background. If you were to darken the whole pic to make the background black, the statue would be invisible because it's even darker than the background.

Some alternatives to try are 1) use an LED light source (which will be less yellow and more blue) for backlighting, or 2) use no lighting and brighten in PP, or 3) use directional backlighting that doesn't put any light onto the background, or 4) use the HSL tool to darken and desaturate yellow and orange (and maybe red) in PP. Adding a custom vignette using a large, well-feathered brush may help also.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

tramsey wrote:

The shot was taken with the only light source as a candle three inches behind Christ's head and about six inches or so from the back ground. Why did the black background which is black board especially made to create a black background. So on a retake what do I do different to maintain the black color

There are two ways to handle this situation. You could adjust the white balance in your camera or you could place a white card against the background in a test shot, remove the white card, take your photograph and than adjust the white balance in Lightroom on the test shot using the LR's Sync feature to clone the correct white balance to your image.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

This is a GREAT example of the usefulness of Raw. You would be able to fix you WB in post. Best of luck.

sbohne

Be aware that just not lighting the background may not give you the result you want. If brighteners were used in the making of the black board, you may find you end up with a bluish cast from underexposure. Brighteners are slowly being phased out because of this and other problems. In the 1970's, I don't know HOW many brides were pissed that their groomsmen's forest green tuxes photographed dove gray. It was due to the natural flourescing of the brighteners used. Kodak actually produced a paper explaining the phenomenon and supplied to professional photographers. I always asked what the tux color was; if not white or black, they got one of those papers.

hassighedgehog Loc: Corona, CA

In PP you could just replace the background color with black if you cannot get it in camera. In PSE I could do it two ways. 1. Select the statue with quick selection/ go to Select and choose inverse to make the selection the background/go to Enhance and choose adjust lighting then choose brightness and contrast/ move the line to darker (may take more than one time) until the background is black. or alternatively go to adjust color and take all the hues to 0.

hassighedgehog Loc: Corona, CA

hassighedgehog wrote:

In PP you could just replace the background color with black if you cannot get it in camera. In PSE I could do it two ways. 1. Select the statue with quick selection/ go to Select and choose inverse to make the selection the background/go to Enhance and choose adjust lighting then choose brightness and contrast/ move the line to darker (may take more than one time) until the background is black. or alternatively go to adjust color and take all the hues to 0.

If you want to maintain a little or the color to give the black the tone of candlelight the first way is better.