White Balance

[candleman]

when matching flash to ambient.
been thinking about white balance lately.. and havn't had much chance to play around.

Full CTO on the flash, set Camera to Tungsten = white in what should be an orange room
WG on the flash, set camera to Flourescent = white in what would be a greenish room

OK.. thats the easy part

what about 1/2 CTO, when would you use that on the flash, and what would the corresponding WB setting be.. sunlight?
Surely we can be more precise than Full CTO or nothing.. i'm just trying to put the 1/2 and 1/4 CTO's into better use.

when do you use CTB ? (i cant say i've ever used CTB..) ever

i'm not asking about colour effects.. i'm speaking about getting true WB andmatching the flash to the ambient.
any experiences or tips apreciated.

if theres a table or a Kelvin chart you could recommend.. that would be awesome.

[LeeR]

Balancing tungsten and flash is not difficult. Depending on how much ambient light is available, you can use the tungsten light as either your main light with the flash set at 1/2 or 1/4, or go CTO and let the tungsten be your fill. Most of the time you are going to want to set the WB at daylight because that will warm whatever tungsten light is used and that is usually good when shooting people. No such luck with flourescent. I've had no luck trying to mix that with flash. About the only thing I have had success with is putting a gel on the flash to match flourescent. But even then, there are so many colors of flourescent that it gets complicated. It's not unusual to find two or three different flourescent colors in the same light fixture.