Yellow shadows in church
Fluorescent filter dilemma
Tungsten or strobe lighting
Fluorescent light question
Color compensation for quartz halogen lights
Home made studio lights
Gray market film (good or bad?)
Which film for studio portraits?
Rating film at a different ISO
Yellow pictures and blue pictures
Filters for black & white photography
Amateur vs. professional films
Professional films from Kodak and Fuji

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I would like to know what causes the yellow shadows cast on the wall behind my subjects at a particular chapel that I photographed a few months ago. I was using a Pentax 645 camera and my Pentax AF400T Flash. Could the yellow shadows be caused by the tungsten lights they had on the alter? If this is the cause, how can I avoid this problem I have another wedding to do this September? I now have a Quantum flash unit in conjunction with my Pentax camera.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Matt

Hello Matt:
Your assumption is probably correct. While some churches have colored windows which will throw all or part of the building into an unexpected color, what you are referring to is indeed probably caused by the tungsten lighting in the building. That particular church may have brighter than usual lighting at the alter which affected your images more than usual. Many photographers do a technique called shutter dragging where they deliberately allow more of the ambient light (usually tungsten) to build on the film rather than let the background go very dark. Choosing longer shutter speeds is how this is done. 1/8th or 1/4th second are common. Most consumers find the effect pleasant and is preferable to a nearly black background. It is however possible to overdo this technique. If you feel that your situation is too extreme you may wish to consider a slightly faster shutter speed (provided your camera will still be synchronized with your flash unit). In addition or as an alternative, you can increase your flash power just a bit and adjust your aperture accordingly which will make your subjects brighter, relative to the background. You may ultimately learn that your current method may indeed be the better way but simply needs a little tweaking.

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A friend wants me to take photo's of his wedding this July. I plan on using the Portra 400 NC Film. Should I use a FL-D Filter inside the reception hall along with my flash or will it make much difference?
Mark

Dear Mark:
The FLD filter over the lens would be a mistake. This filter is pretty much magenta in color. Putting it over your lens when using a strobe would be the same as putting it over the strobe. Everything will look sort of pink. Bad news.
To avoid discolored backgrounds because of the ambient light, try to work with your subjects a little nearer to your backgrounds. Six feet will allow more light to reach the background than if your subjects are twenty feet from the background. If your backgrounds must be far off in the distance you have two options. Allow them to go dark because of the natural fall off of your flash or bring them up with a little supplementary flash provided by an assistant. The latter is definitely preferred. Black backgrounds in wedding photographs are rarely desired.

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I have relatively little experience with studio lighting setups
but I have been experimenting with low cost tungsten type lighting.
This has worked well because I only do black and white photography.
I would like to start making color slides. I understand that I will
have to move to strobe lighting or use correction filters with the tungsten lighting I currently have. I am leaning towards investing in an entry level strobe system.
My photographic setups are typically small product/floral shots. Can you suggest a quality entry level setup that can get me started in the right direction?
Thanks in advance,
Derrick

Dear Derrick:
You could purchase a studio strobe kit but it is not really necessary. All you need to do is to change your film type. You need to select a tungsten balanced slide film to match your tungsten lights. You didn’t say if you had a handheld meter so I suspect you are using the meter in your camera. You may continue to do this but a handheld flash/ambient meter is desirable, especially if you plan to eventually move into using strobes. It would be advisable to do a little bracketing at first until you get the feel for the film that you select. Take notes about your lighting and exposures so you will able to duplicate your best results the next time you set up to shoot.
I am not a big fan of using filters to compensate for color difference in film and lighting. Using the proper film that is balanced for the lights you have is really the best way.

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Hi there,
I recently took some flash pictures at the office where there is a lot of fluorescent light. The pictures came out kind of yellow looking. What did I do wrong?
Thanks for any help.
Ann

Hi Ann:
Fluorescent light tubes come in a variety of different color temperatures. Each will record different on daylight film. The most common color is an unpleasant greenish color. When you indicated that your images had a yellowish color, what you are probably seeing is mixture of fluorescent light and strobe light and a feeble attempt by the lab to compensate for the color and not taking it far enough to get a more natural look. There may even be tungsten lights in the room that you didn’t notice. Printing images made in this situation is hard to do well anyway since the film was exposed under mixed lighting conditions.
You didn't specify if it was just the background that was off color or your subject as well. If you used flash on your subject and the lab tried to compensate for the background being off color then your subject could easily be off because of their attempt to correct for the background.
If you lit the subject with a strobe and the subject looks pretty good but the background looks off, you need to simply control the background by using another strobe to light it separately or work a little closer to the background so more of your flash will reach it. Strobes are the correct color for daylight film. If your subject and background are lit with strobes, you should not get much bad color other than where the strobes cannot reach. Also, check your shutter speed. If you had a shutter speed that was longer than necessary for flash, you may have allowed more of this colored light record on your film than you thought. That would certainly change the color of the background. The only thing you missed was to not recognize that different light sources have different color temperatures and must be dealt with. That is simply a new thing to learn that will make life a little more predictable in the future.

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I shot a few photo's with some halogen shop lights and without the flash as a fill, the shots turned out with a yellowish/green tint, any suggestions on what type of filter I should use to combat this next time? The flash shots turned out pretty well.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Karl

Hi Karl:
Your quartz halogen work lights run a little lower in color temperature than conventional tungsten bulbs. The problem with them is that they are not made for photography so their tolerances are not critical. This can cause a several hundred degree color temperature variance from one bulb to the next. They tend to be around 3000 to 3200 degrees Kelvin which means that the best color compensation filter will be an 80A. It won't be perfect and the images will probably lean to the red side just a bit but should be easily corrected with proper printing. The 80A will cost you about 2 f-stops in speed so be sure to compensate for this.

Kodak and Fuji both make negative film balanced for tungsten light. Kodak's is called VPL. You will still probably see a shift toward the red but you won't have to use the filter to compensate and have a loss of speed as a result.
You might also consider looking into some blue photofloods from your local camera store. They are color correct for daylight film and are not too expensive. Since you won't have to be compensating for the filter, you won't loose two f stops of speed. Get the brightest ones your fixture can safely handle. They do generate some heat.

I do not recommend trying to mix your flash unit with the tungsten lighting regardless of whether you are using filters or not. They are totally different color temperature light sources.

With normal printing, daylight film exposed with tungsten light will look very yellow/red. I suspect that your yellow/green color is just a lack of correction from your lab. You didn't say if you used a professional lab or not. Your labs degree of experience and technical knowledge not to mention concern for doing the best job possible can make quite a difference in the look of your final prints.

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Hello,
I am sure that I am not the first to think of this but I would like to get your input. I want to build my own studio lights. I am thinking of starting with some industrial lights that have a telescoping stand like the ones they sell at home depot. They will have 500w halogen bulbs. I don't know the temperature of the bulbs. I will build 4 way barn doors for them, to be able to get my ratios for portraits, still life etc.

Would I have to use tungsten balanced film or correction filters with these bulbs? If this all works wouldn't it be like painting with available light? I know that I can build these lights with barn doors and all but will it work in the studio?
Thank you very much,
Rodney

Hello Rodney:
I admire someone like you who is willing to do a little work to achieve a desired goal. What you want to do is totally possible but with a few drawbacks that I would like you to think about. With regard to the color temperature issue, please read my answer to another gentleman just above this one. It is titled “Color compensation for quartz halogen lights.” It should handle the color temperature issues and perhaps give you and idea or two that will help you avoid a lot of trial and error.

Now, I love doing the 1940 style of glamour lighting using small light sources with barn doors combined with soft focus. I think it's a breath of fresh air when I see so many portraits being lit by huge soft boxes. If you can master small light sources and create beautiful lighting patterns with them, you will be able to do just about anything when using a larger light source. The lights you are referring to are very bright however and will not make your subjects feel very comfortable. They also generate a lot of heat which could potentially be a fire hazard. Even if you use a diffusion panel to create a variety of different size light sources like I do, you will still be dealing with a lot of bright light in your subjects eyes.

If you were planing to do only black and white, you would have only to worry about the brightness and heat and it's effect on your subjects. If you planned to do color photography and in particular, transparency work, then the color temperature issue might be a bit more than you bargained for. Again I will recommend that you consider the blue photofloods that are already the correct color for daylight film. They are still bright to the eye but will be color correct on daylight film. Cool studio strobes are still the best overall answer for indoor portraits.

By the way. Let me give you a big thumbs up for wanting to use barn doors to control light.

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Dear Scott:
I am curious about film that is commonly called "gray market film." It it a wise choice to save money this way or am I making a mistake by buying it?
Sandy

Hello Sandy:
Gray-market film is manufactured inside but more often outside of the U.S. for distribution to other countries. It is then re-imported and sold in the U.S. The main risk of buying gray film is that environmental conditions of shipping and storage may adversely affect the films quality, color, and speed. Film that is shipped domestically is safe guarded as to temperature and humidity so it arrives essentially the same as when it left the factory. If film has been sitting the hold of a cargo ship in the tropics for weeks or even months, there is no way of knowing what conditions may have deteriorated it’s quality.
In addition, some manufacturers such as Fuji actually tweak the color of some of their films destined for other countries to cater to the color preferences in that culture. That film will not look precisely the same as the same film bought through normal sources. Gray market films may also not be covered by the normal manufacturers warranty. The bottom line is that it is just not worth the tiny savings when buying gray market film. We as photographers have far more important things to worry about and don’t need the headaches of ruined sittings or weddings just to save a buck or so on a roll of film.

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I am just beginning doing portrait work. For studio photography, what film do your recommend?
John

Hi John:
Since you indicated that you will be doing mostly indoor portraits, I would recommend that you work with Kodak Portra 160NC. It is a film made for portraits. Fuji also makes good films but I tend to use only Kodak for most studio portrait work. More important than which brand it the need to stick with one type of film while you are in the early stages of learning. As you make mistakes and experiment with lighting, you don't need for the film characteristics to change from one sitting to the next. You will never be able to tell what you are doing right or wrong if you don't settle on a film and stay with it. Just buy a brick of it and keep using it. You will learn about this business much faster than if you hop around from brand to brand.

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Due to the frequency of this question I have also included it in the Beginners Q & A section.

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Hardly a day goes by without me receiving this question. The answer is rather involved so I need to include something that will help young photographers understand why this is an important concept.

Question: I frequently hear about photographers who are rating their film at a different ISO than is recommended by the manufacture. I am very puzzled about this. Can you explain why?

Answer: The answer to your question is fairly involved but very important to making correct exposures. In my lighting book, this topic takes a significant amount of space.

There really is nothing to be puzzled about. One must establish the proper method of making a correctly exposed negative. You don't make a perfect negative just by selecting a certain ISO. Many factors are involved. These factors include your meters characteristics, your personal method of metering, your method of lighting and your camera and lens characteristics. That's a lot of variables (and they do vary more than you think) so it should be no surprise that determining a proper, repeatable method of making exposures is absolutely essential. Without it, you are doing nothing more than guessing and placing your exposures, at some unknown location within the films exposure range. Photography can be precise with repeatable results or a guess which will produce usable results some of the time but lack total control over all situations.

Did you know that meters can vary more than a half stop from one to the next? That is significant just as is the fact that cameras shutter speeds vary as do the apertures of lenses. Usually not to a great extent but all of these factors add up and contribute to your overall exposure.

Photographers who rate their film as indicated on the box are assuming that the film was intended to be rated this way because of a general assumption about the way that photographers take meter readings. When photographers talk about film speed, they will frequently mention how they rate their film but rarely do they mention HOW they take their meter readings. One is absolutely as important as the other because how you take meter readings determines how your meter reads the light. The common assumption is that meter readings will be made with the dome of the meter facing toward the camera and NOT toward the main source of illumination. This method of metering arbitrarily over exposes the film because it is based on the lower fill light rather on the main light as it should be. The advantage for the film companies is that their film appears to be faster than it really is. It's easy to see why they like this. When you meter as they suggest, you base your entire exposure around the amount of light reaching the shadows rather than basing it upon the highlight as it should be. You will have plenty of detail in the shadow part of your image but your diffused highlights (the most important part of your photograph) will be randomly changing density on the film which in turn will cause your images to vary in both contrast and color balance. The change is due to the fact that as you create lighting with different styles and ratios the difference between the light from the main light and the fill light will change. When you base your exposure on the shadows, the all important highlight jumps around with your lighting style and ratio. Does it make sense to base your entire exposure upon what the shadows look like rather than what the highlight part of the face looks like? No way! This old method (which makes the film appear to be faster than it really is) places the all important diffused highlights as the least important part of the negative.

Once you have tested and established a a working ISO for the film you are using and are metering correctly and consistently, you will have detail in every shadow regardless of whether you are using a gentle ratio or a heavy one and more importantly you will have diffused highlights that are virtually identical from first frame to last. No special processing is required. Your lab will love you and your images will be consistent and predictable.

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I have a Novatron 600 pack with 4 heads. When I use it to take studio pictures with Kodak and Fuji films, the results are very different. The Kodak is too yellow and the Fuji is too blue. I'm very sad and don't know how to solve this problem. The model light was on during the time I took those pictures. I would be appreciate your help before I try again.
Thanks,
Ninh

Dear Ninh:
First let me say that if your images that were done on the Fuji and Kodak films were done under identical conditions, and both were daylight films, the problem is most likely the lab. If you are using a mini lab or other lab that does not work with professional photographers on a regular basis, they may not have color calibrations for each different type of film that is commonly used and don't always take the time to correct for each type of film that comes in the door. You didn't say but from what you said I would doubt that you were using transparency film. Just in case you are not aware of it, there are films that are made for tungsten light as well as for daylight. IF you accidentally got tungsten film and used it with your strobes, your images would look very blue. If this is the case you just need to use the correct film. I still feel that your lab is the main concern unless you radically changed something with your setup between the two different films. Using a long shutter speed would add a little warmth to your images but you would have to get the exposures really long to allow that much warm color to build on the film after the strobes fired. With regard to your Novatron heads there are two possibilities. They began using color correct flash tubes approximately 15 to 18 years ago but not in all of their products. These tubes were color corrected to 5500 degrees. It was an option for quite a few years to get color corrected but today, all of their tubes are color corrected to 5500 degrees. One way to tell if your heads are color corrected is to look at the model number. If the number has a C at the end of it, it is one of the more recent heads that comes color corrected. If you don't have a C at the end and are unsure as to whether the head is color corrected, take a good look at the flash tube itself. If the glass is clear and neutral in color, it is one of the non color corrected tubes and will be bluer than the corrected tubes. If the glass has a yellow/gold tint to it, it is one of the color corrected tubes. It might be a 500 watt tube or a 1000 watt tube but the warm tint is indicative of a color corrected tube. All of your heads should be the same with regard to color. Using filters to correct for individual strobe heads is not a good method. It's much better to simply have all the heads putting out the same consistent (and correct) color.

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Hello,
Your website has been so much help to me!!!!! Thank you.. Anyways, my question is I am an amateur photographer starting to take my photography seriosly. I take mostly B&W photographs, and I would like for you to give me recommendations on filters that are a necessity for B&W photography.
Thanks.
Terry

Hi
Filters used in black and white photography are primarily used to either lighten a particular color or to darken it. If you have a great deal of green in the trees of a scene and you wish to lighten the foliage, you would select a color that would allow the green light from the foliage to pass unhindered while other warmer colors in the scene would be darkened to some degree depending on their precise color and how much of it was blocked by the green filter.

Similarly, if you desire to make your sky look darker for a dramatic effect, you would select a yellow filter. Yellow of course will block some of the cyan to bluish light from the sky thus making the sky appear darker in your final image. For an extreme effect you would choose a deep red filter that would block most of the cool color from the sky rendering it virtually black.

It is always important to observe what other objects in the scene are the same color as the area you are wishing to alter. The effect can be either good or bad depending on the subject so careful observation is important.

Below you will find a few filters that are used for b & w to change the look of the image. It is very important to make exposure adjustments for the light loss while using the filter. Filters come with a guide that will help you make the appropriate adjustment. If you are simply placing the filter over your lens and using the cameras internal meter, the adjustment will be automatic.

If your goal is to darken the sky in a scenic you have several choices.
For a natural looking sky that will show good separation between the sky and clouds, choose a #8 yellow filter.
For a darker sky use a #15 deep yellow.
For a very dark sky use a #25 red filter.
To make the sky nearly black, use a #29 deep red.

The #8 and #15 yellow filters are also handy for making distant scenes look more natural by reducing the blue haze in the atmosphere.

A #47 blue filter will actually increase the haze effect of a distant scene.

To lighten the dark green foliage in a scene with trees, use a #58 green filter.
For a natural look to the same scene, use your #8 yellow.

The #8 yellow is also handy for making portraits where the subject is being photographed against the sky.

The #15 deep yellow is handy for snow scenes under a blue sky. It will enhance the shadows adding texture to the snow.

These same yellow filters are useful for making water look darker when you are under a blue sky and they will also enhance the brilliance of a sunset by darkening any surrounding blue sky.

That’s quite a lot of creative control for only 6 filters!

Here is the list

#8 yellow
#15 deep yellow
#25 red
#29 deep red
#58 green
#47 blue

For indoor photography you have to make judgments based on the colors in the scene. Just remember that if your scene has a lot of green and you use a green filter, that all of the green items will look lighter in the final print and the warm colors will look darker. The yellow filters will darken things that are in the blue range and lighten anything in the yellow range. Red will do the same but to a much higher degree. The blue filter will lighten cool color object while darkening objects in the yellow to orange range.

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What is the difference between amateur films from the drug store and professional films from the camera store?
Dana

Hi Dana:
Consumer films, like KODAK GOLD films, are made with allowances for the aging process. They can sit on the shelf or in your camera for long periods of time and have less need to be refrigerated. Color balance is not as stable from one roll to the next as in professional films because the film is always aging from the moment is ships. You might say that it is designed to be shipped "green" and allowed to ripen while on the shelf. (sorry Kodak)

Professional films on the other hand are manufactured to be shipped while their color balance is at an optimum. It is assumed that the film will be used in a relatively short period of time. These films are usually refrigerated to help preserve their optimum color balance prior to being used. They feature better and more consistent color than consumer films.
If you plan to do professional work, select a professional film.

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A lot of questions come to me about various film types. The truth is that if you read my answers to questions, you already know that I recommend having as few types of film as you can. We generally use Kodak Portra 160NC for all studio work that involves people. The Portra 160VC is used for mostly commercial work or anything that needs a little more contrast and color saturation. My choice for outdoor portraits is Kodak Portra 400VC because at the end of the day when I work outdoors, the lighting is very soft and fairly low in contrast. The 400VC increases the contrast and color a bit.

The more you know about each one that you use the more consistent your results will be. Below, you can click to visit a special area dedicated to a small number of films by Kodak and Fuji. It provides general info from the factories about each film and will hopefully be a good source of info for you when it comes to film selection. I have deliberately left out a lot of specialty films and high speed films. The effort is to focus on films that are good for 99 percent of the work you will do as a working professional. I felt that we didn't need to confuse the reader by including every film type made.

Visit the film pages

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