Indoor Lighting?

first of all, congrats on the SLR. I love me some Canon cameras, but I haven't yet upgraded to an SLR (although the one I have seems to be just one step down).

your best bet is to find a spot where you can get some natural light into the room, and take daytime photos. Also, and I'm going off of what I do with my own camera, mess around with your settings: try landscape shots and go through your different "scene" options to see where you get lighting that you like. and read the manual!

but the sun really is your best friend. morning and late afternoon lights tend to be best, and if you have sheers over your windows try to keep them closed to diffuse the light some.

i can't speak for using photography lamps or setting up a lightbox or any of those things as I have no experience with them. i'm sure some of the awesome photogs on here can help you out though.

hope this helped at least a little bit!

(also, all of the above is just my opinion. i'm a hobby photographer at best, and most a landscape one at that!)

 

For adjusting the colour only, it varies by exact model so check the manual for white balance selection. The default "Auto" setting often doesn't get it quite right with indoor lighting. Try the other presets. If you still can't find one that looks good enough, there is a manual custom setting. On mine, you take a photo of a white object (like a clean sheet of plain white paper) in the light and the camera will make that white look white.

If you do change the white balance setting, do remember to change it back to auto before you use the camera elsewhere. Alternatively, image editing software often has a white balance correction function that can be used too.

If you want more light, you can then look at getting additional lighting. I started using two desk lamps as they were cheap, and later I got some budget photography softboxes. The light from those is great, but they are rather large to have around.

 

Your problem is classical white balance, so I fully second what popo says: check what the camera's manual has to say on adjusting the WB.

I'm not that familiar with Canon DSLR's, and I dont know which particular model you have anyway, but if you're lucky, there is a "custom preset white balance" setting somewhere on the camera that you just activate, point the camera at a white or neutral grey surface that is placed in the light that you intend to shoot in, and just press the shutter release. All done, and your WB will be correctly set for the reminder of the shoot, or until the light changes.

For my own part, I never ever use the Auto WB, nor do I use the factory presets (daylight, fluorescent, tungsten, etc); I always do the custom preset thing before I start shooting, that is the only way I am sure to get the WB I want.

If there is no such custom setting, experiment with the presets that are available, and see how they work in different light.
Fiddling with the manual colour temperature setting like all the real pros do is ... tricky to get right, to say the least. Never got the hang of that.

White balance can also be adjusted in image editing software after the fact just as popo says, but be aware that the utility of this is limited unless you're shooting in RAW. You can do some very fine tweaking of an incorrect WB in a JPEG file, but nothing major. In RAW though, you can correct even gross mistakes in WB without introducing any other strange artifacts into the picture.


Problems with pictures being overexposed (washed out) in daylight are alleviated by reducing aperture — which is to say, going to a higher f/stop number! — and shortening exposure time. Try setting the camera to program auto exposure and make sure that there is no exposure compensation ( the "+/-" button). If the pictures still have too much exposure for your taste, try dialing the exposure compensation down one EV stop (to -1.0) to begin with; more or less as required.

If strong sunlight gives you too sharp shadows, try either using some fill flash, or setting up a reflector to bounce some of the sunlight back to fill the shadows on your subject.

 

Can you post a picture so we can see what the colour balance is looking like?

Also, what lens are you using and what aperture/exposure in addition to other settings.

 

To echo what popo and The Dragon have said, check the white balance settings. Auto does a decent enough job in "normal" shooting like outdoors or in areas with consistent and bright lighting, but sometimes studio work requires more delicate adjustment. I usually keep a white index card with my camera gear always use as a reference for the camera.

I've not played with a Canon SLR, but my Canon Point-and-shoots have a menu where you can define a custom setting. It involves pointing the camera at an area that you consider white and it will adjust the camera's settings to compensate. The index card serves as my reference and I usually put it near the object I'm shooting to do the adjustment.

The card also serves as a makeshift reflector for my speedlight as it can be attached to the top with a rubber band. That helps soften the light coming off the flash and you don't get the harsh shadows from using the flash straight on.

 

I'll completely ditto the advice for more light - it's what you need to consider FIRST, as it is so important to how the photo will turn out.

Definitely check out how to set a custom white balance, but in general I wouldn't rely on incandescent household lighting, because the color casts are a pain to correct and they generally just don't give enough light anyway.

Do a dedicated search for some natural light - check out different parts of your house at different times of the day. Don't forget to open all the blinds and check the bathrooms! Very often they will have wonderful lighting because any light coming in bounces off all the light-colored tiles. You can open your front or back door and put your doll in the open doorway (not in direct sunlight, as it will be give you harsh highlights and shadows).

You never know, you might find a hidden pocket of light that you didn't expect.

Anne

 

Google has a program called Picasa. It's free, and it allows you to auto-contrast, auto-color, and do a lot of other things. Also, Photoshop Elements also has a bunch of tools to fix the color casts in your pics.

 

almost all indoor lighting is either tungsten (which gives off a yellow/orangeish light) or fluorescent (which gives off a greenish light). It can't be seen by the naked eye because our brain's adjust the colours to make us see white, even though it has a colour cast. So basically what your camera is doing, is reading the actual light temperature in the room, you can't see the colour cast with the naked eye, but it's there.

With most DSLRs now in your settings when you're on manual shooting you can adjust the light temperature for your shots, so it will appear white instead of yellow. There's usually default settings for this, but a lot of the new cameras have it so you can manually adjust to exactly what temperature you want. I find this most useful for indoor shots.

I've personally only worked with a 5D mark II, and my DSLR at home is a sony but most are not too dissimilar, the best thing to do anytime you get a new camera is to read the entire manual, learn what every single button does and learn how to get through your menus, it'll make your life sooo much easier in the end!

Also another solution, if you're shooting in raw and you have adobe lightroom, you can actually adjust the colour cast in the program, photoshop also has this type of method by using curves and picking the black and the white points in the photograph.. but I honestly have better, cleaner results when I do it in lightroom. But honestly, nothing substitutes likes shooting the scene for the right light temperature in the first place. Happy shooting