Hi Experts, here is a dummy question: what is your best advice taking pictures under yellowish lighting environment, eg at restuarant?

I wish to remain the environment, but the object tends to be out of the eye-see colour, for instance, green under yellowish light (i presume it looks 70% G, 30% Y from eye) becomes yellowish green (30% G, 70% Y) in the picture; I was using Auto WB mode. If it is WB related, what is your advice on the scale?

Many thanks.

Use manual white balance setting. Use tungsten setting if you have, or maybe fluorescence.

If you have access to colour temperature, use low Kelvin, like 3500K or less (experiment).

Last but not least, if you have custom white balance preset, use that by pointing to a white surface under that particular lighting.

u can 1st let us know wat camera model u r using, so tat specific advise/instruction can be given by all sifus here

Hi Soulfly, thanks for your advice. Can i postulate that since under the yellowish lighting environment is too warm, therefore we need cooler WB to offset the warmness?

Tungsten mode is approximately equal to 3500K? How about the other modes? I can't recall the right terms for the rest: Outdoor? Shaded? and Cloudy?

In this case, do i need to have my flash on?




Hi yap, i am using Olympus e500.

Use direct number adjustment la... For yellow source, usually between 2800~3200 will help. And in rare super yellow like street lamp (as our human eyes also only see yellow color), you need to drop the balanace to close down to the limit 2000, something like 2150 to get correct color. But there are some visible noise with extreme color balance la...

Use custom white balance. (shot at grey card and set WB)..if your slr no this function can try use live view and browse through the list of WB setting to see which one suit the best. but if u use flash it is a diff story..for mine there is a WB dedicated for flash usage.

all depend on your slr setting

Use custom white balance is the easiest I think. Besides grey card, practically you can use any white or neutral grey surface to measure white balance. I use this almost religiously.

Hi experts upstair, thanks for your advice. It leads to another question: how is a grey card look like? and how it works?

grey card is not exactly a special tool ...lol. it could be anything that is grey colour card.

just imagine a card or a hard paper that is in plain grey colour.

how to set the custom white balance... that you need to refer to your camera manual.

get a DSLR body with Kelvin Setting
around 2500 K

err this is not a std feature meh? which slr dont have this feature?

normally i try Tungsten mode first.

if doesn't work. Try others.

if doesn't work. Custom WB + color adjustment.

if doesn't work - aihh might as well snap in RAW.

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Added on February 20, 2008, 5:48 pm

for Canon's, you'll see cams like 10D, 20D, 30D, 40D all have the 100K intervals adjustments for WB settings.

entry range like 300D / 350D / 400D does not have such feature.

For my Sony Alpha a100 have 100K intervals for WB setting with Magenta and Green adjustment also.

thank for the info ..the reason i ask is because most oly entry level slr got the 100k interval feature..for WB

but shoot RAW is the best..u dont need to care about WB and adjust it later..

yeah. we only have 8 modes (including custom) and 4 WB shift directions (GAMB).

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Added on February 20, 2008, 5:59 pm

maybe for the newer ones. and other brands.

perhaps Canon keeps that as it is to set the range apart.

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Added on February 20, 2008, 6:00 pm

problem with RAW is the huge file, lesser shots per memory card BUT you get adjustable parameters. so you lose some, you gain some. in fact you can say you gain more, no more shots that fail due to WB settings.

it's just that some times you just wish to snap in JPG and have K adjustments, too bad already lor.

tat why invest more in CF cards..so can shoot more raw..

I want to but no cash hehehe

Still weighin in between getting 8Gb more of CF or get a portable HDD with the CF backup function or maybe even both

i'd bring my macbook + CF card reader around but it's going to add to the load.

Hi gentlemen upstair, tried your advice above, and it works. 3300K is good enough to produce the eye-see color thst i want under yellowish lighting.

The lowest WB scale of my DSLR could go is 2000K, but it's more than enough.

Btw, i am just wondering, in what circumstance, do we need a WB scale of 100K, which i think the color would be extremely cool??

I have another question (or perhaps i could open another thread): is WB setting a personal preference? or a common interest? (subjective vs objective)

in some cases it's personal preference say i like warmer tones, you like cooler, others like more towards neutral.

however when WB goes wrong - all will say NO NO regardless of what preference.

It's a form of creative control, so your choice of WB for a photo will probably draw from a blend of common established rules as well as your own creative input.

White balance can be used to manipulate the image and to create mood styles. For example, a "warm" white balance has a nice joyous and happy feel to it whilst a "cool" WB image can also mean a more moody. But it can also be judged as something very nice and calm and serene for a cool setting as compared to a warm setting where it might show more action and "oomph".

So back to your question, IMHO, white balance is a personal preference and as what Goldfries has said, it if is very wrong, it is very wrong.

Also do note that incorrect White Balance can affect your noise level.

There's little you can do about scenes lit by yellow streetlights as they are low-CRI light sources. They're inherently bad for color reproduction.

Dear all, thanks for all the information above. Sometimes, i do struggle to decide the right WB scale.



Hi wkKay, what CRI stands for?


I found an interesting website on candlelight photographing guide. It's worthwhile to share with beginners.

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog...ht-photography/

DPS is a very very good site.

CRI = Color Rendering Index

The old-school way is to buy a blue filter for amber light. That way, you won't get the noise from setting your temperature to Kelvin... but your shutter speed will be slower.

If you want to use flash with amber light, the flash will be white and the amber extra amber because your camera chooses 5500K. So, you should buy a color correction gel to put on your flash. It makes your flash amber so you can set a lower temperature... and you won't get the white-face-amber-background effect.

By far the best in Kelvin WB is Olympus with 2000K to 14000K... plus the One Touch White Balance function. Every other brand does 2500K to 9900/10000K.

Canon's 30D, interestingly, stops at 2800K while the 40D can do 2500K. The 300/350/400D has a minor box that lets you adjust green/magenta in -/+3 and amber/blue in -3/+3 but it's nowhere as extreme as going to 2500K.

Sometimes, I love going to 2500K with G9 (maximum green on the Sony A700) to give a very moody cross-processed color which seems to be popular with Nikon shooters.

If I am shooting a person under amber streetlights WITH the streetlights, I keep it looking like it was amber, around 3000-3500K. So the viewer sees it and knows it's a streetlight.

But, if I am just shooting the person and not including the background, I might try 2500K to make it look like daylight color.

Hi albnok, it is very interesting, it will be great if you could show an example here? Never thought of using this kind of extreme setting.

2500K - note how cool the streetlights are


Add G9.


Probably G3 or so.


(contrast enhanced but color was there like that)


I think this was around G9.

Cool, i like this, very unique.

What's the setting? 2500K + G9? How's the original environment?

Original environment was mixed stage lighting, a lot of red, orange, green and blue. Adding the G9 makes blues become more cyan-ish. This is Jamasia in Desa Sri Hartamas; a lot of rock performances happened there.

If you want to shoot stuff like this with colored lighting, Laundry Bar at The Curve has gigs every Thursday night. They won't stop you from taking pictures.

You should also wait for the light, as light goes from bright to dark quickly. Only shoot when it's bright. Try to shoot when there is light on the hair, it will make the person stand out more.

In Photoshop, I used the Dodge tool with Midtones. After that, use the Sponge tool on Saturate and saturate it until it becomes very poster-color.