[Bob in St. Louis]

Hey fellas,

Yesterday I was posting pics of my new acoustic room treatments and am getting weird results depending on whether or not I use a flash.
The walls of my room are a dark gray, if I use the factory flash on the Nikon D40, it REALLY accentuates the blue pigment in the paint and looks disgusting.
If I do not use the flash, the black speaker grill fabric looks brown.
So, how do I take a picture that contains both the wall color and acoustic panels in the same image?

Here's the results:

> Flash OFF.
-Correct wall color (well, it's pretty close. In reality it's slightly darker)
-Incorrect panel color. We've all seen black speaker grill fabric. Where did the brown come from? 


====================================

> Flash ON.
-Almost correct panel color. In reality it "blacker". This image still has a hint of brown.
-VERY incorrect wall color. nasty. nasty blue.

[Audiovista]

Hi Bob,

Try playing with the White Balance setting in your camera. Change it from Auto to another setting (try Cloudy setting if you're getting bluish cast on your gray wall). Or Custom setting (if available in your camera) and "train" it on a white paper or gray wall. That may help get you closer to the real colors.

Best,
Boris

[Bob in St. Louis]

Ok, thanks Boris. I'll give that a shot (pun intended). 

Bob

[drphoto]

There could be pigments in the paint responding to UV emitted by the flash. UV can cause a blue cast in some materials.

 As far as white balancing, sure you could use a grey card or the grey wall to set the white balance of the camera, but if can shoot RAW and have software to process the files, just click the grey wall to set it to the neutral color. The 'grey' in the first image looks pretty warm to me.

If you can shoot RAW, but don't have the software, email me the file and I'll process it for you.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Alright Doctor, thank you. I'll probably play with the white balance. I can shoot RAW, but don't have software (that I know of) to process it. Having you do it for me reminds me of that old phrase "give a man a fish feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, feed him for life". 
I certainly don't want to have to email you every photo I have a problem with. Thank you very much for the offer thou!
Thanks fellas!!

Bob

[WGH]

I usually shoot in RAW and put a light gray card in an area I will crop out.
The RAW software has a white balance setting, and setting the cursor on the gray card and clicking adjusts the white balance.

Alternately, if you shoot jpg's then I use a free Photoshop plugin called AIM Space Hunter to find the white balance.
The AIM site is off line, you can get my copy of the Space Hunter plugin here.

Wayne

[Bob in St. Louis]

Thanks for the reply Wayne,
Although, was your post written in English?   
I need to get my camera manual out and see what's all this white balance thing is about. The only thing I know about white balance has to do with display units (TV's and projector calibration). I barely know what RAW even is, although I have discovered the D40 (quite by accident) can do image overlays within the camera if the images are shot in RAW. Other than that, I know very little about the cards, or how to adjust the white balance.
Thanks for the link to the plug-in, but I don't have the main Photoshop software so I don't think the plug-in will do me much good.

In the thread I have going regarding the acoustical room treatment's I had mentioned my lack of quality images and a fellow linked me to this gray card.

Bob - Lower than novice

[drphoto]

Bob, your camera probably came w/ some sort of rudimentary RAW processing software. I know back when I had a Nikon D1x, it had a RAW converter. Seems like I remember you have a Nikon.

The beauty of correcting white balance is RAW is that you don't lose any data, you just shuffle the numbers around. If you take a jpeg that is, say, really warm and start dialing out red and yellow.....you're tossing away info. Do it enough and the image will start to 'tone break' or look posterized.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Ohh, now I understand. Thank you.
You are correct, I have a Nikon D40. Although after I bought it, come to find out, it's a gray market camera. The software I have (had) was in Japanese. I get zero support from Nikon. No software, no firmware, etc.... without a valid serial number.
So, If I received RAW software, I cant use it. 

I may look around for some freeware.

Thanks for the explanation! 

Bob

[low.pfile]

Ohh, now I understand. Thank you.
You are correct, I have a Nikon D40. Although after I bought it, come to find out, it's a gray market camera. The software I have (had) was in Japanese. I get zero support from Nikon. No software, no firmware, etc.... without a valid serial number.
So, If I received RAW software, I cant use it. 

I may look around for some freeware.

Thanks for the explanation! 

Bob

Bob,
Nikon Software is provided for free with the camera. It is called ViewNX. But since you have grey market...ViewNX should be available for free download on the interwebbie. Very few other applications can read .NEF (Nikon's version of RAW).   ViewNX has controls to change the White Balance to a number of presets or custom by sampling the Graypoint via a simple pull down menu.

I am wondering:
Are you using the built in flash or an add-on flash?
What camera mode are shooting in?
What type of lighting is in the room (incandescent, fluorescent,or tungsten?)
What color is the ceiling in that room?

I am wondering if combined light (ambient room + flash) is giving you the strange results?

White balance is probably the most overlooked setting on DSLR cameras. Normally it's set to Auto, but certain scenes can trick the camera to give you something unexpected (your flash image is proof of that). Setting the whitebalace correctly sets the baseline color for white/gray, which in turn affects all the other colors. Shooting RAW/NEF images allows this to be edited after the shot is taken. Simply put, with the camera in WB Preset mode, to set custom white balance you take a photo of a white surface with the flash on -in the same environment that you are taking pics. It takes less than 20 seconds to do this process.

Let us know how it goes.

ed

[WGH]

Too bad about the no software part of the deal. RAW is like have a digital negative that you can mess with and convert to a tiff, but the negative never changes. Search Google for Nikon RAW converters, there are some free ones available.

Unzip then Move or Copy the Space Hunter plugin to the plugin folder of your favorite photo editing software. It also works with Jasc Paintshop Pro and probably many others.

As for a gray card, I use a light gray piece of plastic laminate, just plain old white cardboard will work too. The official gray card is for setting exposure before you take a photo. How I use it is to place the gray card somewhere in the photo, just inside the frame so I can crop (trim) it out later.

Open the photo in your favorite photo editor, start the plugin (look in the Effects tab).
Click the lower left hand circle 1
Right click on the white/gray card in the photo. See the white + in Space Hunter? That is where I right clicked.
Ta-da, colors are now correct.

[low.pfile]

Bob,

Here is the link for free download of the latest Nikon ViewNX software:

http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=61

ed

[Bob in St. Louis]

Excellent!
I went on Nikon's website for the ViewNX program and it wants my zipcode to tell me where I can purchase a copy of the software. 

Thanks for the link Ed! Good timing!

Wayne, my favorite picture editor is Microsoft photo editor. It allows me to crop, rotate and delete photos.  That's about it.
Looks like I need to find some software for that too.
I've got MS's "Paint", but you guys will probably laugh at me for that one too.

In the past, I've done my best to take "decent" photos without having to mess with them after the fact. Since I'm not in the same league as you guys I figured I didn't need all the fancy bells and whistles on editing software to achieve the level of absolute photographic perfection you guys achieve.

But it looks like I need something more than I've got.

Tell me this; Does a DSLR need to be "calibrated" periodically like a television/display unit for best results?
Flat panel TVs have their setting cranked up from the factory to make the display units look appealing when they're being compaired side by side with a hundred other units sitting on the shelf at "Dickeys Electronic Emporium".
Are cameras like this?

Thanks again fellas!
Bob

[nathanm]

I think just making a custom white balance preset for a given lighting condition is all you need to do.  I'm sure even the "Incandescent" preset would be an improvement for the non-flash images.  With a fixed preset you'll have more consistent results.  With Auto the camera is making potentially incorrect tweaks.  Even a white sheet of paper will do in a pinch.

Black fabric can be deceptively colored when blasted with light.  It may look deep neutral black to the naked eye but with enough light you might find it has a slight hue.

[Bob in St. Louis]

I inadvertently ignored some questions yesterday, sorry about that:
Answers are in red

I am wondering:
Are you using the built in flash or an add-on flash? Built in
What camera mode are shooting in? AUTO (for ignorant idiots)
What type of lighting is in the room (incandescent, fluorescent,or tungsten?) 11 dimable incandescent bulbs
What color is the ceiling in that room? two thirds of it is Taupe acoustic ceiling tile. One third is gray, same as the walls, drywall.

This morning I read through the manual on how to adjust white balance. There's a truckload of adjustments in there for white balance alone. I've seen some of them before, but avoided messing with them for fear I'd not be able to return it to factory settings.
Rarely do I deviate from the 'auto' (idiot) setting, and when I do it's simply to turn the flash off.
So, I shot about 15 pics of the wall and panels this morning with decent results. Nothing worth storing on a gallery and posting here mind you, but progress was made. I tried the 'incandescent' setting and the results where a shade of brilliant blue I've never seen before. Not good.

I'll play some more tonight.

Guys, thank you very much! 
Bob

[drphoto]

I'm not familiar w/ your camera, but the Nikon I had made it very simple to set white balance. You selected custom white balance in the menu and took a picture of a white surface (filling the frame) under the lighting conditions where you are shooting. Much easier than w/ Canon.

[thunderbrick]

PM me and I'll hook you up with my son in Webster Groves who I am sure will have what you need.  We can talk in the evenings for more specific guidance.  He is friends with Rick R. across the street from you at the UDM place.
TOB (the other Bob)

[Bob in St. Louis]

Yea, there is an [auto] setting, which should make things better. I'd prefer to get away from anything that says [auto] and actually learn how to take a picture. Lack of uninterrupted time in life makes that difficult. I've tried bringing technical manuals here to work, but these darn customer keep getting in the way.
I found the incredible amount of available adjustments for white balance slightly daunting this morning. Maybe for the time being the [auto] setting may have to be my new friend.    

TOB (The Other Bob) Cool! Is he a photographer dude?

Bob

[nathanm]

It is slightly more convoluted than need be, but essentially it's the same idea: using a white\grey image to measure from.  Don't worry about the fine tuning just yet.  Just shoot a white sheet under your lighting and it should be good to go.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Bingo! Of the 149 pages in the D40 manual, that's the only one I printed this morning.
But of course I got sidetracked following the instructions and decided to play with taking photos while playing with buttons and settings.
I did actually put the D40 about 12" away from my wall (serving as the gray image), to "calibrate" the unit, but the end result didn't look very appealing. I was on my way to grab a white piece of paper, that's when I got sidetracked and started playing with buttons.

I'll do it again tonight, and actually follow the instructions.
Thanks Nathan!

Bob