Red light a challenge for band photos. Strategies for red light?

[bbb34]

Oddly enough,I had just been wondering if photographers ever study the law of color. As a cosmetology instructor, I teach in on a regular basis. I would like to go back to some of my older photos, re-edit and apply.

Essentially, all three primary colors (red, blue, yellow) must be present for a natural look. Thus, if you have too much red you are missing blue and yellow, which combined make green. If I lighten a client's hair and it looks yellow, we tone with a violet-based blond - red+blue=violet.

There are no particular primary colors. You may choose them yourself. The set of your chosen primary colors spawns the gamut of secondary colors. There are better and worse primary color sets. Good primary colors can generate a maximum range of seconday colors.

Then you need to distinguish between additive and subtractive color mixing. When adding lights, red blue and green make pretty good primary colors. That's why the very most TVs are using them. Printers are subtracting lights with color pigments. Cyan, magenta, and yellow are a good set for subtractive mixing.

Red, blue and yellow are pretty poor for mixing, although children learn to use them as primary colors with their paint-boxes.

Greetings,
bbb

 

[cayenne]

Green is essential for the auto exposure system. If its missing, you will need to use manual exposure. The camera is trying to expose to get the correct amount of brightness and it uses the green channel to do this.
Try manual exposure using the histogram of the red channel. It won't be wonderful, but can be much better.

Interesting info....

I'd think that especially in this type of shooting environment...that anything other than going full manual shouldn't be considered if you're wanting to get a high number of keepers would it?

At least, that's been the consensus of about everything I've read about concert photography so far...

I watched a lot of youtube videos from this guy awhile back, showing how he shoots concerts from the pit...and had some good advice.

I hesitate to put this link because he has mention of shooting a Justin bieber concert (shudder)...but anyway you might could get some info here, and he has a signup link for email (use a throw away account) and he has a short ebook on concert shooting which has some useful advice.

http://froknowsphoto.com/tag/concert-photography/

But I'd say, search youtube for the 'fro' and concert shooting, and stuff with redlights/B&W were covered in the ones I found and viewed.

HTH,

cayenne

 

[Chuck Alaimo]

Strobing white would be bad, but what if you gel your strobes green? A couple remote slaves up high pointing at the stage, turned to a low power setting? (I'm still in lighting 101)

Most venues won't let you use flash at all, much less remote slaves. Also, time vs pay, most of the time when I'm shooting live shows, the money paid pretty much means get in and out quick...I'm not arriving at a venue hours before doors open to set up strobes. And, depending on the band, they don't really care and or are aware that red lights suck...some I think even do it on purpose (most of the times you get 3 songs and your out, so many times I have been like please please please something other than red...red for the first 3, then the full spectrum after that!!!)

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Green is essential for the auto exposure system. If its missing, you will need to use manual exposure. The camera is trying to expose to get the correct amount of brightness and it uses the green channel to do this.
Try manual exposure using the histogram of the red channel. It won't be wonderful, but can be much better.

It uses the green channel to do AE? Interesting, never heard of that.

A camera may use all the colors for exposure, but the luminance channel is almost always the same as the green channel. Get rid of green, and you fool the exposure system. Yellow has a lot of green in it, so it works fine.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms2.htm

 

[Drizzt321]

Green is essential for the auto exposure system. If its missing, you will need to use manual exposure. The camera is trying to expose to get the correct amount of brightness and it uses the green channel to do this.
Try manual exposure using the histogram of the red channel. It won't be wonderful, but can be much better.

It uses the green channel to do AE? Interesting, never heard of that.

A camera may use all the colors for exposure, but the luminance channel is almost always the same as the green channel. Get rid of green, and you fool the exposure system. Yellow has a lot of green in it, so it works fine.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms2.htm

Ah, very interesting, thank you. So modern AE systems use luminance for determining exposure, ok. How does that compare to a CdS light meter? Light meter reads based off of intensity, right? How would this correspond to luminance? Or is it not exact because a light meter doesn't read any type of color, merely how much light reflects off (or is incident on) a surface?

 

[Cptn Rigo]

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed...lol


love yellow though!

Coheed and cambria!!!! they rock!

 

[chris_w_digits]

I sincerely appreciate the feedback I've gotten. My main strategy has been to "salvage" a lot of the red images by making them monochrome, or using the color temperature trick to turn the images a more purple color, as others mentioned, which can be desaturated a bit and not have as bad a "pink and white" look. If there is presence of any other color to a slight degree, it makes this trick work much better. I do shoot RAW so that gives me a lot of options for improving the look of the images.

One thing that still puzzles me -- why is red the most problematic color rather than blue? For making a grayscale image out of RGB, the formula 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B is common (it's what the YIQ color system used by analog TV used for the luminance). From this, you'd think that since blue contributes the least to the grayscale, that it would be the problematic color. However, if something is lit with only blue light, the pictures come out great. Why red?

 

[East Wind Photography]

Longer wavelength
Anti-aliasing filters
less AF sensitivity
Some sensors are more (or less) sensitive to red

I'm sure there are some other reasons but those come off the top of my head at the moment.

I sincerely appreciate the feedback I've gotten. My main strategy has been to "salvage" a lot of the red images by making them monochrome, or using the color temperature trick to turn the images a more purple color, as others mentioned, which can be desaturated a bit and not have as bad a "pink and white" look. If there is presence of any other color to a slight degree, it makes this trick work much better. I do shoot RAW so that gives me a lot of options for improving the look of the images.

One thing that still puzzles me -- why is red the most problematic color rather than blue? For making a grayscale image out of RGB, the formula 0.299R + 0.587G + 0.114B is common (it's what the YIQ color system used by analog TV used for the luminance). From this, you'd think that since blue contributes the least to the grayscale, that it would be the problematic color. However, if something is lit with only blue light, the pictures come out great. Why red?

 

[7enderbender]

I can only reiterate what others have said. B/W is one way out to some degree. Obviously shoot all manual for more consistent results. And then if you work for a specific band try to point out what the issue is (in a way that drummers or even singers can understand) and see if they let you place a few strobes in a strategic places. If they let you you can even gel them. Or see if they can have at least a bit of white from FOH.

I've actually gone the gelled strobe route once for a band that really didn't have any colored stage lighting. I know that usually strobes and live music are considered a no-no but it's all in the communication. I've been playing as a musician for many years myself we were never concerned with flashes going off really. Certainly less annoying than the sea of cell phone screens at today's shows. Whatever happened to lighters?