Alphabravo2020

I'm wondering what would be the ideal white balance target to have in the frame during a shoot where the lighting color is not constant and where the light is a different color from different directions.

I've been shooting fashion shows lately and the lighting is usually pretty bad. The lighting for the runway is a mix of colors and types and directions, sometimes changing in real-time and along the length of the runway.

There is really no way to set white balance that would work short of having a white balance target in every shot. I was thinking that a white sphere would work sort of like the spheres they use on movie sets.

At one show I ended up using a white vinyl sheet on the floor as a passable white balance target. Since light was coming from several directions I could sample at different places of the ripples in the vinyl for a passable WB correction.

At 1 and 2 you can see that there is a lot of background and subject light reflected. At 3 it is almost a perfect representation of the incident light.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I have three standards for casual work:

> Delta-1 Gray Card (cheap, better than nothing, sets exposure and white balance, good for JPEG workflow and raw). Not a perfect gray reference.

> ExpoDisc (expensive filter attachment, pain in the patoot to use, must place camera in same plane as subject and aim to where the camera WILL BE). I seldom use it. Used as directed, it is quite accurate. Best for still life work or portraiture, where you have time to work. Useless for events.

> One Shot Digital Calibration Target (expensive, comes in several sizes, folds up for travel, has near-black, near-white, and gray reference stripes, easy to use indoors, bad in wind).

For critical work, use a ColorChecker Passport and create a profile in Lightroom Classic for each lighting situation.

For runway model fashion photos, I have no idea what I'd do. It would depend on the venue and what is allowed.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Spyder Cube for Cameras...

This small thing is quite incredible. B&W, Grey, Color absorption (black hole) and silver reflection.

I found this more useful than anything else.

About $50.00 in various stores.

Alphabravo2020

Woah that looks perfect. It's getting to the point where I sometimes know the show producers well enough that I can make lighting and staging suggestions. Something like this could be integrated into the runway.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Looks excellent!

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

You can only white balance on a single target.

The only thing that will come remotely close is a white or gray card facing the camera. Don't put it near to a strongly colored object.

Anything else is going to drive you nuts.

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

With different color light from multiple directions no color checker/card will help you. Even in clean continuous light color checkers have never given me results that didn’t need additional tweaking. I stopped using them and just work with kelvin, tint and HSL sliders as needed.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

It looks like a really dumb idea.

Think about what different colors coming from different directions will to do it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I have good luck in venues where I can scout ahead and learn the actual color temperature of the light sources. It's less and less common to be in a theatre with 3200K Tungsten-Halogen Quartz lights these days, because 4300K to 4700K LED fixtures have replaced most of them, especially in newer areas. HMI lights are usually 5000 to 5600K.

The trick for working with colored accent lighting on location is to set the camera for a fixed color temperature they use for WHITE light, and let the color fall where it may. There is no point in color correcting colored light back to "white." I'm thinking of theatre, rock concerts, and shows where color is used for mood... Runway modeling may or may not be a fit, depending upon what is important to capture.

lindmike

AB2020, If I have my grey card available I will use it. If not, and if I have a water bottle with me, I will splash some water on concrete and use the grey that is produced as mt grey card.

Good luck.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

On my Android phone is the optional "Expert Raw" camera app. It has a readout of "WB" in Kelvin. I also have a free app called Light Meter from the Play Store. It has a WB readout. A friend who shoots documentaries has a paid for app on his iPhone with a WB read out. You point the phone at the subject area, get a WB number and set a manual WB in the camera.

The three apps will be within 100 or 200 K. Any further adjustment in post can be done with the "Calibrated Mark V Eyeball".

jamesl Loc: Pennsylvania

The best is a color chart like Color Checker Passport or the Spyder CheckR. You can use a WhiBal card or the least expensive option is to use an 18% Gray card.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It's really not meant for that. However, you can get a sense of the impossibility of perfect white balance in a scene by eye-droppering the various sides and seeing what happens to the overall scene. At least you can find the best in a bad mix of alternatives...

One purpose of tools such as this is to determine exposure ratios for controlled lighting in a studio. It's an evolution of a thing Kodak used to have back in the 1980s. But with multiple sides, there is no reason why it can't be used to check for lighting color consistency, too.

In a studio, if you mix old flash tubes with new flash tubes in studio strobe units, you will get a warm/cool effect. The unit with the new tube will be bluer than the older tube. Also, if you have one tube that is UV-filtered, and one that is not, this device will very quickly tell you to match them one way or another.

Frankly, achieving "accurate" white balance with location lighting is often farcical. I remember a wedding with the sun streaming through multi-colored stained glass windows on one side, while the overheads were incandescent and the spotlights were LEDs and the back wall of the stage was brass organ pipes lit with a mix of old cool white and warm white fluorescents. I wasn't photographing it, and I was damned glad I didn't have to explain the funky color! That's one where you normally click on every part of a white dress and choose the least ugly. But THAT bride was wearing a stylish beige...

Alphabravo2020

I think something like that cube could work for an in-frame target but for use on a stage or runway it would have to be larger and have more facets, say a dodecahedron or maybe a sphere, to reflect light from at least 3 different directions. Then you have the option of choosing which point best represents the lighting conditions on the face for example.

CamB Loc: Juneau, Alaska

I shoot lots of theater. Constant color and intensity changes. I do the same thing. Auto white balance and adjust color later. Really, what else can you do?