Newbie - Indoor Lighting (yellow cast) question

[mishmatta]

Hi everyone, I'm a NEWBIE and am learning as I go. I have a Pentax K200d and a Pentax AF-200fg external flash. I'd like to ask the professionals here for some tips to improve my flash photos.

When shooting indoors at a public place (church, building) that has standard lighting (low to average lighting, not flourescents), my shots always have a yellow cast. I've tried with the built in flash, as well as the external. The "more" flash I use, the more of a shadow I get, and the more washed out the subjects look (with still a yellow cast). Generally I'll be shooting in auto mode, but sometimes I will play around in manual mode to try and improve the pictures. But I'm a beginner and I'm still learning and would love some tips.

Can someone explain as a general rule how to eliminate the yellow cast in your pictures?

Eventually I would LOVE to be able to use my flash indoors to produce professional quality shots (I'm mostly a natural light photographer). I see other professional photographers that shoot in someone's house and have portrait studio quality to their work (no shadows, no yellow cast, looks straight out of a studio). I'd love to know the secret (or do they carry around lighting equipment in their cars!?!?)

I am including some pictures as examples. All 3 were taken with the external flash and in auto mode. I appreciate any help the experienced ones can provide!

Thanks.

[Samanax]

The color cast comes from the type of lights that are used in the buildings. You need to correct that with gels and white balance correction.

Are you shooting in JPEG or RAW?

Flash Filters/Gels

Strobist: Lighting 101 - Using Gels To Correct Light

Flash Gels for Correcting Color Temperature: The Gels (Part 1)

Flash Gels for Correcting Color Temperature: Using the Gels (Part 2)

Strobist Pro Rosco Color Correction Gel Pack

Flash Photography Techniques

[inkista]

Gels if you're using flash.

If you're shooting available light (i.e., without a flash), then use the white balance setting in your camera, or learn to shoot RAW and correct the white balance in post processing.

For most things, the color cast you talk about can be solved simply by putting the camera's white balance mode into "Tungsten." The preset white balance are generally "good enough", but sometimes may not be exact for the shooting situation, which is why some cameras also do color by Kelvins, or white balance bracketing, too. But typically it's easier to adjust white balance in post processing if you have to move quickly under varying light conditions while you shoot. You want to shoot in RAW, rather than JPEG, because RAW has more latitude for color shifting. If you attempt to do a large color shift in JPEG, you'll end up with halos and artifacts.

The biggest problem you will have is if you mix lighting, such as flash+tungsten or flash+flourescent, which is why you gel the flash so you'll have only one specific color cast to deal with.

[candleman]

my method (i seldom Gel) is set your WB for your Key light

IE what are you exposing for? flash or ambient?

the majority of the time i expose for flash by bouncing off a roof, or through an umbrella etc etc.
i manually set my whiteballance to the colour temperature of the flash (which is around 5300k-5600k)
i can honestly say i never use the presets.. always Kelvin scale.
by doing this, i've never had a serious colour cast problem.
there are the occasional shifts such as Inkista mentioned under Tungsten. (flourescent i havnt noticed a problem yet) but thats pretty easy to tweak in ACR.

[mishmatta]

Hi Everyone, I appreciate your replies very much!

Usually I've shot in JPEG. I've played around with RAW but I use photoshop 5 as my editor, and it doesn't recognize the RAW files, so that's really the only reason I stopped shooting in RAW.

I will check out the Gel filter.

As far as the WB goes, the only time I can change it is if I'm in manual mode. If I choose auto, which if I'm in a pinch and don't have time to "play" with my settings, I will choose Auto.

Everyone's suggestions are very helpful and give me a place to start.

Would using a deflector help at all to bounce the white cast?