Reddish pictures when doing some night shots

[PlayWithFire]

Some of the blogs that i read have mentioned the 365 photographs project. Since i am very much a beginner, i figures that this might be a very good way to me to improve. I would like to have a shot for every day in 2007, and i am getting a head start to get into the habit of this.

I've taken some shots at night, but for some reason they appear very red. I am not sure why that is. I have a feeling it has to do with my white balance setting.
Take a look at these three shots. The first two are what i mean by red. The last one is more acceptable for me. How can i get more of my shots to look like the last one?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/139/328688217_c41675cd82_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/playwithfire/328688217/) http://farm1.static.flickr.com/143/328695142_3e1d74040a_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/playwithfire/328695142/) http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/328695956_f43b4c6eae_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/playwithfire/328695956/)
The pictures link to their flickr page, so you can navigate there to see exactly how they were taken.
Thanks in advance!

[ron.richardson]

i have a feeling the red is due to the lights that are around? if you change your white balance to tungsten, it will tend to cancel out the reddish/orange color and look more natural. if your camera can do it, shoot in RAW mode, and then change it up and you'll be able to see the difference immediately.

[PlayWithFire]

ok, so i guess i was right.
I've yet to try RAW, but i will experiment with it. The only thing, is i have a Nikon D70s, and i think that the RAW processing from Nikon software costs money. I will look into that.

Thanks!

[Nicole]

...I've taken some shots at night, but for some reason they appear very red. I am not sure why that is. I have a feeling it has to do with my white balance setting...

White balance is going to be a huge factor in these sorts of shots. First thing that I'd recommend if you're going to be taking a lot of night shots is to shoot in RAW, for the simple reason that it will let you change your white balance after the fact when you're editing your pictures after downloading. Most photo editing programs will let you change the white balance (e.g. Nikon software, PSE, CS2, and I'm sure others as well).

Which white balance setting you choose depends on the type of lights that you're dealing with, so it may take a bit of experimenting to figure out what works best (go back to step one to see why shooting RAW can be very helpful here).

I'd suggest that you could try using the Tungsten WB setting (it looks like a little lightbulb on the Nikon). It will cast a much more blue tint to the picture eliminating some / most of the redness. Your WB was set to Auto on the pictures you had on flickr, so that didn't shed any light on it, but hopefully these suggestions will help you out.

I had a great link for this, but I'm having a hard time finding it. Will post here when I find it. :)

[PlayWithFire]

thank you Nicole. I'll be back at the railroad tracks next week, so i'll experiment with white balance there, and see if i can improve that shot.

[googlit]

If you use Photoshop, there's a RAW conversion plugin that costs no money. There are lots of programs that help to process RAW. Look around with Google--I'm sure you'll find something. In this post-processing thread (http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36), Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture seem to be the popular ones.

Many of my low-light pics tend to be reddish. If you use Photoshop, hit Ctrl+B (image>adjustments>color balance, I think) and play with the sliders until you get the tones evened out. If it's a consistent problem, you can make that an action and just play it whenever you open up one of your red pics.

[Nicole]

ok, so i guess i was right.
I've yet to try RAW, but i will experiment with it. The only thing, is i have a Nikon D70s, and i think that the RAW processing from Nikon software costs money. I will look into that.

Thanks!

If you have a valid Nikon serial number, which presumably since you have a camera you do, then you can download the NikonView (http://support.nikontech.com/cgi-bin/nikonusa.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=61) which comes with NikonEditor from the Nikon website for free. The NikonEditor lets you change white balance easily on RAW files.

It's actually not a bad little piece of software for little things like that (especially if you're looking for something that's free ;))

[PlayWithFire]

thank you very much!
i will try it out tonight

[henryscat]

I am downloading now - not something I have been aware of - thanks for pointing it out!