# Night Photography - Too Orange?



## nick.s (Dec 21, 2009)

Hi guys,

Quick Q, how do I prevent the 'orange' tones in photos like this?

I used the standard night photography setting on my EOS 450d using the standard Canon 18-55mm lense.


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## bretti_kivi (Apr 22, 2008)

setting the white balance properly. Though it is *really* difficult to do with single-colour light sources, as white really is made of all the colours and when they're not there, then they won't appear in the shot.

make sense?

Bret


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## PaulGTI (Oct 21, 2006)

If you have a photoshop type program there should be an AWB (Auto white balance) dropper in there somewhere, for this I used the white porch on the left of the pic.










For this one I used the white facing on top of the garage near the for sale sign on the right to set the white balance.










EDIT: Doing this sort of post photo tinering works alot better with RAW files.


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## chris3boro (May 12, 2008)

Biggest tip I could give you is to put it in manual mode and play about with settings. I have the 450D and you will learn a lot if you just experiment with it


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## nick.s (Dec 21, 2009)

Thanks guys  

I've played around with Aperture on my Mac so am comfortable with post-shot processing, so I will check out the white balance etc on my camera. 

I did notice a tad less orange if I reduced the exposure time and used the flash, so a bit more leg work needed.


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## Shiny (Apr 23, 2007)

Did you get the Canon Digital Photo Pro software with your camera?

If so, take your pictures in raw and then open it up in the Digital Photo Pro program. It gives you an option then to view the shot in the various daytime, cloudy etc settings and also manually adjust the white balance.

I found it a good tool to find out how the different settings effect the picture, including the tone modes such as portrait, landscape etc.


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## nick.s (Dec 21, 2009)

I did yes, something else for me to tinker with I think. And to think that this weekend that I was going to be in theatre watching my son be born


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## scottgm (Dec 27, 2009)

Hmm other option is to get a hold of "grey cards"... im sure they have other names but.. basicly..

You take a shot with the card in the photo.. then take the shot as you would... but in post processing, e.g. in camera raw for example... you would use the white balance tool and click on the grey card to achieve the correct white balance then apply it to the photo without the card.

I hope this makes sense.

Here is a link to a page in a book i have by Scott Kelby about using grey cards

Google Books


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## nick.s (Dec 21, 2009)

scottgm said:


> Hmm other option is to get a hold of "grey cards"... im sure they have other names but.. basicly..
> 
> You take a shot with the card in the photo.. then take the shot as you would... but in post processing, e.g. in camera raw for example... you would use the white balance tool and click on the grey card to achieve the correct white balance then apply it to the photo without the card.
> 
> ...


I like the idea of that, something to definitely try!


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## scottgm (Dec 27, 2009)

Glad i could help


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## Oakey22 (Feb 12, 2010)

scottgm said:


> Hmm other option is to get a hold of "grey cards"... im sure they have other names but.. basicly..
> 
> You take a shot with the card in the photo.. then take the shot as you would... but in post processing, e.g. in camera raw for example... you would use the white balance tool and click on the grey card to achieve the correct white balance then apply it to the photo without the card.
> 
> ...


Yep this is exactly what you want to do. Use a Grey Card and meter off it + set the white balance to it. This way you wont get the orange from the street lights.

Either that or shoot in RAW and post edit it in photoshop or lightroom.


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## Katana (Mar 31, 2007)

Learn how to set white balance, the 450D has a dedicated WB button on it from what i can remember; what's the point in having a DSLR if you aren't going to take control.
Don't know how experienced you are but a good book for Canon DSLR is Canon Rebel T1i/500D: From Snapshots to Great Shots the 500D is similar enough for the book to be useful, i have a version of it for my nikon and it's a good book and pretty cheap.


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