sodium light

[SmartWombat]

My choice here is to up the flash power and have really orange shadows if the balance is for the flash, or to shoot with available light which is sodium discharge lamps in the ceiling.

Is there any hope of getting a decent picture with sodium lighting?
It's essentially monochromatic orange.

The first is as close as I could get, white reflections in the helmet, but it still looks off on the faces.
The other shot is with flash, and there's a deep orange shadow on the white of Louise's suit.

Can anyone suggest how to improve this, or is it a no-hope situation?

[Greg McCary]

Have you tried tweaking the WB?

[Grandpaw]

Use a white sheet of paper and set the white balance manually, Jeff

[gahspidy]

I would say reduce the saturation and up the brightness/exposure a bit. i like the first image alot for the moment of interest and concentration on the crowd

[jetrim]

Fastest easiest way to fix these problems in the future is a CTO (color temperature orange) gel for your speedlight. I've been using one for a while on my quantum for fashion shows (typically they provide 1000w tungsten lights for the runway) and it's cut down on processing headaches considerably!

Adjusted this in Adobe Camera Raw using the white balance eyedropper - one click on the white shirt far left in the back and it looks better from here...(a bit magenta though)

[SmartWombat]

Greg: Yes the ones I posted are all adjusted.

Jetrim: The white racesuit on the blonde cuddling her helmet is looking a little blue though, as are the shadows.

Email me if you want the original RAW file to try adjusting, I'd like to see other people's results.


I'm really having a problem with these, and want to see how it should be done, both rescuing these shot under sodium - and using CTO.
The lighting in the conference centre really is awful. But it's the first opportunity in the year to get the drivers in action, so I don't want to miss it.

This is undedited:

[kevinlipo]

Great editing. It is smoother. The texture is awesome.

[jetrim]

This is a tough one. Any time you get into dual illuminants it's a nightmare. I tried the original out with the channel mixer with limited results (it has a slight green cast I can't seem to get rid of) and I tried making 2 layers, 1 white balance set to the background on top at 50% opacity and one set to the foreground on the bottom at 100% opacity which was more promising, but a ton of work if you're doing a bunch of shots.

The young driver's suit was blue in both - I suspect it's the shiny blue paint reflecting off the far side of the helmet onto the white suit.

[gahspidy]

Jets WB edit is about as good as your going to get these without spending a considerable amount of time.
Yep, the way to avoid this in the future is to gel your flash to match the ambient light source. I keep a gel for tungsten lights (warm orange color) and a gel for flourescent lighting which is greenish in tone. Its never really going to be perfect when two different light sources are used but it helps immensly.

[SmartWombat]

Thanks everyone - I'm just lucky this is in the evening.
Otherwise I'd have sodium light, and daylight from the long strip skylights.
Fortunately they don't use the mercury bulbs in that hall, otherwise I'd have 3 ambient light sources.