Exposing for whites in Interiors

Jer · Feb 19, 2020

Hi all,

I apologize if this has been posted before but I couldn’t find a similar thread so here goes:
I’ve been shooting this coffee shop in my area off and on for years, and I never seem to get the exposure right. I think what presents the challenge is the mixture of warm outdoor light and cooler indoor artificial light (I don’t even know if it’s tungsten, or whether “tungsten” is a blanket term for artificial interior light of a certain temperature range). So my question essentially boils down to how one can shoot such a scene like this while preserving the true white of the interiors, or if that’s even possible using color film—perhaps utilizing flash is the only way? Or maybe these are all just underexposed, and the underlying tints are due underexposure compensation? Is this something that can be corrected in the dark room? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

*In the reference photos attached, i’ve included exposures from both my Pentax 67 and Nikon F3, using Portra 800.

David A. Goldfarb · Feb 19, 2020

Mixed indoor and outdoor lighting is a challenge—even more so with the current mixture of artificial lighting that may be in use. Options are changing the bulbs to daylight balanced LEDs, gelling the indoor bulbs to match daylight or like they do in the movies you could gel the windows to match the indoor lighting, or you could light the whole scene with your own artificial lighting of consistent color temperature. If you’re just informally shooting in a cafe and not doing a job for the cafe owners, probably none of these are realistic propositions beyond using one or two small strobes.

To get a handle on the problem, you might get an app like “Light Meter” for iPhone (I presume there’s something like it for Android), which will give you the color temperature of the scene. Point your phone at something like the white side of a neutral grey card pointed at the various light sources to get a reading of the Kelvin temperature of the light (the red/blue balance).

From the photos, it looks like you also have fluorescent lighting in the mix, causing magenta/green balance problems. “Light Meter” doesn’t measure that, but maybe there’s another app that does, or you could run some tests with a digital camera set for daylight white balance and photograph a white card under various light sources in the cafe, and look at them in something like Adobe Camera Raw to see where you need to set the color temperature and M/G balance to correct all the light sources to daylight.

Andrew O'Neill · Feb 19, 2020

I don't do colour but if I had to, I'd probably base the exposure reading from a gray card... then I'd make two exposures on one frame. First with fluorescent light off. Second with fluorescent lights on and correction filter over lens... This is advice from someone who never uses colour!

Mainecoonmaniac · Feb 19, 2020

The tungsten lights is fighting the daylight windows. You have to make the color temperature of both light sources close as possible. Two things could can do. You can gel the windows with a CTO filter and shoot tungsten balanced film or gel the lights with a CTB filter and shoot daylight film. It depends on which battle you want to pick. I would guess the easier solution is to use the CTB and gel the lights. Since I'm a pragmatist, I would shoot digital in RAW. You could do the color balance in post production.

wiltw · Feb 19, 2020

Just to point out the fact that consideration of the trueness of the 'white' is a combination of

color balance (which you have already started this thread about), AND
tonal accuracy...some of those example photos capture 'white' as a strong grayish tone, as they are underexposed and thereby tonally wrong vs. reality

an 18% grey card in the scene would help to establish both

darkroommike · Feb 19, 2020

Meters do not see "white" only a middle gray (not planning to go into which gray, but trust me it's gray). So if you meter an inside wall you will need to open up 2-3 stops from what your meter is telling you is the correct exposure for the gray wall to make it white. Now let's compound the problem by shooting towards the front window and backlighting the main subject. One more thing, different parts of that wall are going to receive different amounts of light from the interior lighting due to inverse square law.

ic-racer · Feb 20, 2020

I presume you are printing on color negative material? In which case, you should be able to adjust the filter packt to make most continuous spectrum light sources the 'white' reference in the print. With respect to discontinuous light sources (mercury or neon or fluorescent) that may not be the case. Those may not be able to be filtered to 'white' no matter what you do,

Jer · Feb 20, 2020

Boy,

Well I appreciate all the information, albeit with a a bit of disconcertion due the reality of the situation.

It seems then, that this just may beyond the medium (without an expansive lighting setup)? Correct me if i’m wrong, but without the ability to alter the interior/window lighting, and desiring a truly analog process (i.e., no photoshop), I am at the mercy of color-correcting lens filters or correction in the dark room.

Problem being, even with an 800 ASA film, as you can see from the results, either I set the shutter long enough to expose correctly (1/15th, etc), and risk blurred images (especially with a Pentax 67), or underexpose and have grays as can be seen above. To color correct with a filter then, letting in less light, would then increase the low light problem, no?

I mean obviously there’s opening up the aperture, but as with any architecture photography, I really want everything in focus if possible.

If I may ask a follow-up then, say I were to purchase an on-camera flash; would this at all be of use? It seems like that would knock out both the ambient color cast and low-light problem with one stone, unless i’m missing something here. That would assuredly lead to very contrasty exposures i’m imagining, but I wouldn’t hate that necessarily. And if this is the case, any recs for a Pentax 67 or Nikon F3?

Thank you so much again.

I tell you, the deeper I dive, the more Sisyphean Film photography seems, lol.

mark · Feb 20, 2020

An on camera flash is not going to work. I've tried in a similar situation. I decided interiors were not for me.

Opening the aperture is not the only way to let more light in. Put the camera on a tripod and lengthen the exposure.

David A. Goldfarb · Feb 20, 2020

Photoshop or no Photoshop, it’s hard to correct mixed lighting after the fact. You can’t just correct the whole scene to neutral, because fixing one part causes problems in the area illuminated by different lighting. Sometimes you can let that happen, like a winter indoor scene shot with tungsten film or filtration (to the extent that that’s even relevant anymore with CF and LED lighting indoors), where you let a view out the window go to blue as an artificial way of conveying “winter” with a warm cozy interior. But if you want it all to be right, you’re looking at masking and cross-gradients and such for different parts of the image.

On camera light? Yeah, try some flash bounced off the ceiling or a wall to bring up the level of interior light to overpower the continuous lighting in the cafe. If the interior lighting is interesting, you might experiment with slow sync speeds to allow some of it to be visible without creating a strong color cast. If you want to match indoor and outdoor lighting, you’ll need a more powerful strobe. If you can meter, try to adjust the flash (in manual) and aperture settings so that the interior is exposed correctly, but the view out the window is about 1 to 1.5 stops overexposed for a natural appearance.

jvo · Mar 2, 2020

my 2 cents... if i were having the problem, i would "complement" the daylight from the window and use that. use a strobe and bounce it off the side of the wall/window wherever i was in the cafe. hopefully that will provide "daylight" temperature light to overcome all the other variable lighting temps. this would be a starting point and adjust from there. ( others have suggested a similar approach).

yes in some of those shots it would have to be a big honker (vivitar 285 or similar).

(as I say it, i like the idea cause it would solve the problem at the front end of the process, add light, complement your main source of light, and simplify the whole effort!) good luck.

Sirius Glass · Mar 3, 2020

I would suggest because there is a predominance of white that you use an incident meter. This is the white cat on a white rug photograph or conversely a black cat on a pile of coal, so get the ambient light reading for the exposure rather than an incident light reading.

John Koehrer · Mar 3, 2020

Ambient light is the light from all sources present in a given situation whereas incident light is the light illuminating or falling onto a given object. A flash contributes to ambient light,however the main intent is to increase the incident light.

Found it on the internet. Explains a lot to me pretty clearly(it's what I need).
I also think jvo's suggestion may be the easiest way to get near some sort of neutral color balance overall.

The Vivitar 283 had a snap on diffuser available, I don't recall if the 285 did because of the zoom head.

BrianShaw · Mar 3, 2020

John Koehrer said:
The Vivitar 283 had a snap on diffuser available, I don't recall if the 285 did because of the zoom head.

I don’t recall one but there are aftermarket diffusers for 285 by Sto-fen, and probably others too.

wiltw · Mar 4, 2020

Jer said:
Problem being, even with an 800 ASA film, as you can see from the results, either I set the shutter long enough to expose correctly (1/15th, etc), and risk blurred images (especially with a Pentax 67), or underexpose and have grays as can be seen above. To color correct with a filter then, letting in less light, would then increase the low light problem, no?

I mean obviously there’s opening up the aperture, but as with any architecture photography, I really want everything in focus if possible.

There is always mounting a camera on a tripod, and using self-timer or a cable release to release the shutter without shaking the camera+lens!

Jer said:
If I may ask a follow-up then, say I were to purchase an on-camera flash; would this at all be of use? It seems like that would knock out both the ambient color cast and low-light problem with one stone, unless i’m missing something here. That would assuredly lead to very contrasty exposures i’m imagining, but I wouldn’t hate that necessarily. And if this is the case, any recs for a Pentax 67 or Nikon F3?

Thank you so much again.

I tell you, the deeper I dive, the more Sisyphean Film photography seems, lol.

The issue is to not use 'small source' flash which casts strong shadows, instead use

bounce flash, such as bouncing the flash off wall behind you or aimed to corners to either side and behind camera...the issue here is any colored wall taints your supplemental light!
use softbox to make the apparent size of the flash into a 'large source'

wiltw · Mar 4, 2020

Sirius Glass said:
I would suggest because there is a predominance of white that you use an incident meter. This is the white cat on a white rug photograph or conversely a black cat on a pile of coal, so get the ambient light reading for the exposure rather than an incident light reading.

^^^

Exposing for whites in Interiors

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