Hi, I'm an amateur photographer and I have been having trouble with getting good lighting for my photographs. I do primarily portraiture in my house with a couple photo lights (not the expensive kind!) and a good manual camera. I recently changed the batteries in my light meter so I'm fairly certain that it is in good working order. My question is this: if I want to shoot indoors (usually I like it better), how can I get a good light reading, and thus expose my negs properly? I do b&w mostly, and a little color. My color slides/prints have a gold cast to them..does it have to do with the film or my lighting? I use Tri-X 400 B&W and Kodak Gold 200 or 400.

Short of buying expensive lights, and shooting with only available light, which is tough sometimes, are there any other ways to get good light and still get good results?

Thanks in advance!

-- Erin Conroy (ericon_22@hotmail.com), November 01, 1999

Answers

Here is the 'quick fix' to your problem. When doing portraits of people with light skin [caucasian] take a reading directly off their face & 'open up' one stop. Your lens need not be in focus to do this. It is actually better if the images is 'unfocused.'

Color side film: - you need tungsten film such as Kodak's EPY-64, OR you need to get blue photo bulbs for your lights. If you are mixing daylight and artificial light you will get a blue and yellow [cool & warm] light mix in your image. So, you would probably want to photograph totally in artifical light, or totally in dalight coming trough a window.

Color print film: - take it to your film processor and tell them to reprint with less of a warm tone balance. Also, try blue photo bulbs.

-- Christian Harkness (chris.harkness@eudoramail.com), November 02, 1999.

You could also try warming filters (e.g., 81B) to compensate for the tungsten light in color. A filter would also help for the tonal balance in black and white, but I can't off-hand remember which one (it might be red).

-- Chris Werner (cbwerner@att.net), November 02, 1999.

I'm sorry Chris, but an 81B filter WILL NOT compensate for the warm cast from tungsten light when shooting color,it will add to the warm cast. A filter in the "80" series would be more appropriate in this case.

-- Michael Schlapfer (MYK830@aol.com), November 05, 1999.

Michael's right. A filter such as the Tiffen 80A or equivelent is what is needed for use with daylight film under tungsten lighting. This blueish filter will compensate for the orange cast coming off of the tungsten filiment. Or, you can use tungsten balanced film such as Kodak Pro 100T color negative film, or Fuji NPL.

-- Walter Massa (WFMassa@webtv.net), November 28, 1999.