White balancing under changing interior/stage lighting?

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Camera Fun

Senior Member
I'm going to be taking some general photos of our services at church to post on the church's website with my D7000 and the 18-105. My main concern is how to address the white balance during the worship portion of the service when the stage and worship team will be lit with changing settings of overhead white lights, overhead colored lights, and colored up-lights aimed up the back wall of the stage. I will be shooting RAW so I can edit things afterwards as needed. The overhead white and the up-lights are new led. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Camera Fun said:
I'm going to be taking some general photos of our services at church to post on the church's website with my D7000 and the 18-105. My main concern is how to address the white balance during the worship portion of the service when the stage and worship team will be lit with changing settings of overhead white lights, overhead colored lights, and colored up-lights aimed up the back wall of the stage. I will be shooting RAW so I can edit things afterwards as needed. The overhead white and the up-lights are new led. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.
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What do you use to edit your RAW files?

I'm sure a custom WB setting would be ideal but personally, I'd shoot using Auto-WB and then use the White Balance Tool in Adobe Camera RAW to correct as needed, but I'm also a Photoshop user.
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N

nickt

Senior Member
I have no advice on the WB, but watch out for the led lighting. Depending on the led driver, they may be pulsed and can cause unexpected exposure and color problems when combined with certain shutter speeds. This can be especially true if they are dimmed. No prediction what frequency they might flicker at. I have an led kitchen light and when I dim it down, I can easily get totally screwed up pictures at 1/500 shutter speed. Most of them will catch the light totally off at that speed. At 1/200, I get more success, but still a few dark ones. I need to go down to about 1/60 to get steady results. As expected, things get better at full brightness because the 'on' cycle is longer. Various led lights in the house behave differently, so just be aware.
 
R

RocketCowboy

Senior Member
Camera Fun said:
I'm going to be taking some general photos of our services at church to post on the church's website with my D7000 and the 18-105. My main concern is how to address the white balance during the worship portion of the service when the stage and worship team will be lit with changing settings of overhead white lights, overhead colored lights, and colored up-lights aimed up the back wall of the stage. I will be shooting RAW so I can edit things afterwards as needed. The overhead white and the up-lights are new led. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I know it doesn't help much, but you can probably eliminate some of the concern around the up-lights unless they are also spilling a lot of light on your subjects. I think your two primary concerns would be the mix of white and gel'ed lights that are hitting your subject(s). Ideally it's a consistent arrangement of white and colored so that you can possibly set a customer white balance, but otherwise you might have to find a close middle road to go with and then correct in post.
 
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