White balance for photographing Christmas lights?

5 months 3 weeks ago #758839 by Spencer Posey
I'm heading out on Saturday to photograph Christmas lights, which is the best white balance to use for getting lights showing the best?   


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5 months 3 weeks ago #758847 by Hassner
What I do in difficult lighting is to shoot a white card now and then. When processing the RAW image, I click with the white balance prompter? on the card. Whenever you change location, you will have to reshoot the white card. 

Because you have all the colours of the rainbow, I will shoot on daylight settings, because you want the breakaway from natural light to make your shot colourful. 


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5 months 2 weeks ago #758866 by LensofNature

Hassner wrote: What I do in difficult lighting is to shoot a white card now and then. When processing the RAW image, I click with the white balance prompter? on the card. Whenever you change location, you will have to reshoot the white card. 

Because you have all the colours of the rainbow, I will shoot on daylight settings, because you want the breakaway from natural light to make your shot colourful. 


How is the daylight setting different from natural light? Bluer or more orange?


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5 months 2 weeks ago #758873 by Spencer Posey
Thank you for the answers.  Now I'm not very experienced so never done white card before.  how is that done? 


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5 months 2 weeks ago #758881 by Razky

Spencer Posey wrote: Thank you for the answers. Now I'm not very experienced so never done white card before. how is that done? 

A white card is for exposure, NOT white balance! I've always used daylight-balanced transparency film for night street scenes, fireworks, holiday lights, &c. Just did a digital comparison of my lights, 3200K versus 5000K - I still prefer daylight-balance. I won't pretend to be qualified to recommend anything for you, though - you ought to be able to run your own comparisons and choose for yourself what you prefer. Last year I photographed over 100 local residential scenes on Velvia-50 - starting next week I intend to cover marinas from Chula Vista to Oceanside, Southern California, with a DSLR. This is an exciting time of year for photography - good luck with your project!


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5 months 2 weeks ago #758915 by Hassner
I know what a white card is used for, but I used it very successfully for photographing historic paintings. 
Film was easy.

I used the white mount board, because a friend had a framing shop. An A6 size is big enough, fits easily into a camera bag. Hold it in the first pic so it fills 20% more or less of the pic. 
Then you just click on the card with your white balance prompter, hoping your processor has one. I use Photoshop, so it is one click in RAW. Then I set the rest of the pics the same colour setting. 


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