Photos come out orange?

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  • I am like super, super new to photography. I've been trying to learn on my own, and while I think the quality of my photos has gone up, I always seem to run into an issue with lighting. My photos usually turn out with a kind of orange tinge. I'm not really sure if it's due to the lighting of the rooms I'm in when I take photos, but I've noticed it happens a lot. If anyone had any tips or suggestions, that would be great :) I'm about to go to a con in a couple of weeks and I would love to be able to solve this problem so I can have good photos :)

    I use a Canon EOS Rebel T3

  • Different light sources, even if you think of them as "white", are actually different colors. Incandescent light bulbs are orange compared to daylight, for example. Many fluorescent bulbs are green compared to daylight. Daylight is blue compared to incandescent bulbs. Your eyes/brain automatically adjust based on context to perceive them all as white, while it's not so easy for cameras.

    Adjust your White Balance to account for these differences in color temperature. There should be presets you can use to balance for daylight, overcast, tungsten, or fluorescent. A daylight white balance under tungsten light will make everything look orange. Tungsten white balance under tungsten light should neutralize it. Or you can set White Balance to Auto and let the camera try to figure out the best setting. Or you can set a custom white balance from a target (ideally a gray card): the camera will set whichever white balance will make the target neutral.

    You can also adjust white balance in post. Ideally you want to shoot raw instead of jpeg when doing this. Adjusting white balance in post from a raw is as good in terms of data preservation as setting it in camera from the start. Many post processing software like Lightroom have a white balance eyedropper tool that you can use on neutral targets similar to custom white balance in camera.

  • Customize your white balance in camera. that's it.

  • Okay, thank you guys!

  • The answers are good..but just in case youre getting these effects only when youre using flash here's some more info.

    If youre firing off a flash (its colored for daylight so its blueish) and the rest of your room is lit with incandescent bulbs...then your white balance will auto set to your flash since its overpowering most of the light...however because it corrects for it, your background lights will go from white\yellow to orange. You can get around this by using a colored gel for your flash like a CTO sheet for color temperature orange..so when your flash shoots out..it turns it orange...matches background lighting so the camera adapts and everything looks right. PS there's gel colors for different kinds of light (florescent etc).