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cjs-nh
Participant
May 29, 2023
Question

LED Theater Lighting Color Cast

  • May 29, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 311 views

I photograph dance recitals in local high school auditoriums.  More and more the venues are adding LED lighting fixtures.   LED lighting is great for generating different color light without the use of gels, but creates a unworldly purple cast on the faces.  

I have tried a slower shutter speed but as you can imagine, the dancers show motion blur.

Interestingly the histogram of an LED lit image shows a clear Red, Green, and Blue peak corresponding to the RGB LEDs?

Any suggestions?

 

 

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2 replies

KR Seals
Community Expert
KR SealsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 31, 2023

I faced that in a venue last week where I shot a big music show. I was disapponted to see that the light was subtly changing every few seconds. The best I could do in processing was to manually color balance on the face of the primary character in eash photo. A lot of the purplish cast can be improved by moving the green-magenta slider toward green but not so far the face becomes green. Always shoot raw for the greatest adjustment range. Unless you have a camera specific profile like the Z9 Camera Standard, I find the Adobe Color profile works best in mixed lighting.

 

Ken Seals - Nikon Z 9, Z 8, 14mm-800mm. Computer Win 11 Pro, I7-14700K, 64GB, RTX3070TI. Travel machine: 2021 MacBook Pro M1 MAX 64GB. All Adobe apps.
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Rikk Flohr_PhotographyCommunity Manager
May 30, 2023

In unknown lighting, the best advice is to shoot a color checker in the stage lights and then white balance to the color checker and use that value for your live theater shots.  Does the panel you are using have a high CRI across the RGB range?

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
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