Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Situation: A stage decorated with lots of colors. Ceiling is black for the stage part and beige color at the audience level. Walls at the side are yellow-brown looking. No spot lights from anywhere but 4 stage lights at the top shining down (It's the 3200K ones).

Standing at the bottom of the stage with my flash pointing up 45 degrees, the color looks yellow....and kinda orange. What can I do to take nice bright true color images?

Some of my ideas are
1. diffuser on flash (with the orange ones?)
2. attach gel on flash (like this one? http://www.adorama.com/LQGFH.html)
3. use gray card and set it as custom white balance (but this will be tedious as I will be running to other parts of the hall during the performance)
4. adjust color in lightroom (but my goal is to avoid spending a lot of time on touch-ups, minor color correct is fine but I rather take nice photos)

Any feedback / tips are welcome Thanks!

You won't get it perfect with that many lights. However if there is enough variety it will add an interesting look. If you have a subject that you're using your flash to fill, you can gel the flash to be as close a match to the light source lighting that subject. If you gel the flash warmer or colder to match and you shoot in RAW you should be able to fine tune the WB to flatter the subject.

Thanks for the tip! I'm not so familiar with the gel thing, never had one before. Any brand that's good? What do I need to look for when I buy it?

If possible shoot without the flash. A fill flash makes your subjects and background look flat from a distance. Plus, if your not the only photographer there you will make enemies with the pop of your flash... especially if there are TV crews there.

If you absolutely have to flash then yes

^^

Agreed about the flash. If you don't have to use it, don't. The lighting at shows sometimes give it that little somethin something. Granted, I don't have a flash to use but I've been annoyed at a few who've used it constantly through a show. They've peeved off the performers and some of the crowd too.

Depending on the show, and as long as I had enough shots taken... There's usually quite a few shots that are good enough to not require crazy amounts of tweaking on the computer.

Don't use flash, it kills the mood and distracts actors and audience.
Also, if possible, try to muffle your shutter as well.
Stage lighting is an art by itself, so in my strong opinion, flash is an unwelcomed addition.

Set your camera white balance to Tungsten or use Tungsten film (very expensive, but you will great quality pictures).

You can take a look at the few theatre shots I have made in the past, these one's done with the digital camera:

http://photowave.zenfolio.com/p784243566

Good luck!

Thanks for the advice! If I don't use flash, I'm afraid the photos will be blurry...the kids will be dancing and moving. I guess blurry shows motion but I don't want a lot of that Cranking up the ISO will add noise...any programs you guys recommend to reduce noise? I heard that Lightroom 3 is pretty good

Oh, I totally forgot about the custom temperature option on the camera. Thanks for mentioning that, I'll take a look

Sometimes you just have to deal with noise to get the photo. I use Noise Ninja, a plugin for Photoshop.. it gets the job done.

You can check out some of my concert shots from Saturday night of Down With Webster here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisagrant/sets/72157624716028655/

I didn't use flash, it resulted some high iso's. I did some noise reduction in photoshop and in most cases left the colour cast from the stage lighting.

Well said!!

Sounds like you may know a thing or two about stage lighting David