Lil Neutrino
New Member
I say ugly but that's subjective...I personally don't like the yellow coloration that so many flowering pics have as I find the plants to be so much more attractive under "normal" light. To solve this problem is quite simple and requires you to merely try a setting other than "Auto" that will allow you to adjust your white balance 
It also means you don't have to move your plants out of the grow room to get natural lighting or tweak them in Photoshop or whatever you may use. This is an added bonus as the lighting in grow rooms is often plenty bright so you never need to use a flash (flash is generally bad, avoid at all costs if you can compensate other ways...be it shutter speed, F-stop, adjusting available light, etc.).
I posted the following in my journal and siscokid's but thought others may benefit from it and I know not everyone is reading either journal (but you should be! Right? lol). It's a very very simple process and will do wonders for your photos not just of your plants but anywhere you go...I got tired of coming home from hikes and finding my pics did not quite reflect the actual colors of the scenery when I took them and discovered that it was a white balance issue:
Depending on the model and if it supports the following ability I have a tip for those who take yellow-tinted pics due to the flowering lights (yellow isn't my favorite color but that's just me)...all of mine are taken under 2700K CFL's with a Canon S3 IS Power Shot (it's about 3 years old) as well but you'd never know it from my pics.
A lot of people aren't too keen on taking pics in a mode other than "Auto" but it's worth playing around, after all it's not like the old days when you had to pay to develop film if you didn't know someone with a dark room lol.
Here's how it works on my camera, yours may be similar:
I set my camera to "Program" mode (not sure why it's called that), it's basically "Auto" but allows me to use my macro and super macro settings as well as tweak white balance, exposure, flash delay, and a few other things. Basically gives me control over everything except the F-stop and the shutter speed. But I digress...
Find your "White Balance" settings option in your camera menu and set it to "Manual", don't use any of the presets especially if you are at home! The colors may look all funky through the viewfinder but that's because you need to calibrate it. It's really easy, all you need to do is find something white, point your camera at it so it fills most of the viewfinder, press the "Set" button, and PRESTO! Now your camera knows what white is supposed to look like and adjusts its internal settings to compensate. You may need to check your manual for specific instructions for your camera but that's it in a nutshell, hope it made sense. All you are doing is showing your camera what white is supposed to look like and it will do the rest for you!
Now next time you take pics under your flowering lights bring a white sheet of paper with you (or a T-shirt, I often wear a white t-shirt while hiking just for that purpose lol, or anything that is white) and set your white balance under the grow lights. It doesn't have to be pure white, it can be notebook paper, an envelope with some writing on it, or whatever...the important part is that it is mostly white, the closer to true white you can get the better. I believe there are calibration tools you can buy at photography stores just for this purpose but I've never looked myself. When you take your pics they should show up without the yellow-tint and more true to what they would look like under "regular" lighting because your camera is compensating and correcting the colors automatically based on what you told it that it should look like.
If that doesn't make sense let me know and I'll try to explain it better! There's some good articles also found via Google that explain it too, hope this helps!
It also means you don't have to move your plants out of the grow room to get natural lighting or tweak them in Photoshop or whatever you may use. This is an added bonus as the lighting in grow rooms is often plenty bright so you never need to use a flash (flash is generally bad, avoid at all costs if you can compensate other ways...be it shutter speed, F-stop, adjusting available light, etc.).I posted the following in my journal and siscokid's but thought others may benefit from it and I know not everyone is reading either journal (but you should be! Right? lol). It's a very very simple process and will do wonders for your photos not just of your plants but anywhere you go...I got tired of coming home from hikes and finding my pics did not quite reflect the actual colors of the scenery when I took them and discovered that it was a white balance issue:
Depending on the model and if it supports the following ability I have a tip for those who take yellow-tinted pics due to the flowering lights (yellow isn't my favorite color but that's just me)...all of mine are taken under 2700K CFL's with a Canon S3 IS Power Shot (it's about 3 years old) as well but you'd never know it from my pics.
A lot of people aren't too keen on taking pics in a mode other than "Auto" but it's worth playing around, after all it's not like the old days when you had to pay to develop film if you didn't know someone with a dark room lol.
Here's how it works on my camera, yours may be similar:
I set my camera to "Program" mode (not sure why it's called that), it's basically "Auto" but allows me to use my macro and super macro settings as well as tweak white balance, exposure, flash delay, and a few other things. Basically gives me control over everything except the F-stop and the shutter speed. But I digress...
Find your "White Balance" settings option in your camera menu and set it to "Manual", don't use any of the presets especially if you are at home! The colors may look all funky through the viewfinder but that's because you need to calibrate it. It's really easy, all you need to do is find something white, point your camera at it so it fills most of the viewfinder, press the "Set" button, and PRESTO! Now your camera knows what white is supposed to look like and adjusts its internal settings to compensate. You may need to check your manual for specific instructions for your camera but that's it in a nutshell, hope it made sense. All you are doing is showing your camera what white is supposed to look like and it will do the rest for you!
Now next time you take pics under your flowering lights bring a white sheet of paper with you (or a T-shirt, I often wear a white t-shirt while hiking just for that purpose lol, or anything that is white) and set your white balance under the grow lights. It doesn't have to be pure white, it can be notebook paper, an envelope with some writing on it, or whatever...the important part is that it is mostly white, the closer to true white you can get the better. I believe there are calibration tools you can buy at photography stores just for this purpose but I've never looked myself. When you take your pics they should show up without the yellow-tint and more true to what they would look like under "regular" lighting because your camera is compensating and correcting the colors automatically based on what you told it that it should look like.
If that doesn't make sense let me know and I'll try to explain it better! There's some good articles also found via Google that explain it too, hope this helps!
