How should I handle white balance for dance floor photos under colored party lights?
Asked 8/9/2010
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2 answers
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I’m photographing people on a dance floor at a party with a disco ball, lasers, and other flashing colored lights, without using flash. Since the lighting changes constantly and includes strong color casts, what’s the best way to set white balance? Is there a practical approach in-camera, or is this mainly something to fix later when editing RAW files?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
16y ago
2 Answers
5
A grey card will not help you much; the coloured lights will throw off any auto white balance, and if you're adjusting manually, you'll still need to account for what coloured light was actually there, which will change from photo to photo.
You're more like to want to reproduce the colours well, which means balancing for the bulbs behind the coloured gels/filters, which often overwhelm the background light (but will depend on the venue). If the background light is particularly bright, this means you've got a bit of a problem, as it probably doesn't match the bulbs in the coloured lights, and you'll have to compromise at something that doesn't make the background balance unnatural, but still renders the colours well.
All that said, a quick and dirty method to get you in the ballpark: Take two pictures, one at tungsten (or slightly higher; say 3500K) and one at daylight. Compare them to see if one looks especially blue or especially orange, and pick the other one. If you can't decide, pick an in-between value like 4500K.
The reasoning is that the lights behind the gels/filters are likely to be very close to one of those values. With all the coloured light around, it's not going to matter as much, and if you need to do subtle tweaks in post, this gets you more than close enough.
I strongly suspect you won't need to tweak WB subtly in post, and will be more worried about bringing out the colours. Even then I wouldn't feel bound by any sort of objective accuracy; it's often the feeling of these situations that's the important thing, and they often feel exaggerated.
Originally by user496. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user496
16y ago
0
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With constantly changing colored lights, there usually isn’t one “correct” white balance for every frame. A gray card often won’t help much because the color of the light is changing shot to shot.
The most practical approach is to shoot RAW and adjust white balance later. If there’s a relatively steady ambient/background light, balance for that rather than the flashing colored effects. In post, use a white-balance eyedropper on something neutral if available, or adjust by eye until the scene looks natural while still preserving the party lighting mood.
For this kind of event, exact white balance often matters less than keeping the atmosphere believable. Auto WB can be acceptable, especially if the ambient light is mostly tungsten, but expect variation. If you want a consistent starting point in-camera, try tungsten/incandescent and see if it gives a pleasing result.
In short: don’t chase perfect WB on the dance floor; capture the moment, shoot RAW, and fine-tune afterward.
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