Help - where did this color come from?

[jerp]

Hey photo experts - I've got a question about how this picture came out. Nobody in the shot was wearing purple but two guy's coats and several hats are purple in the picture. Why does that color - pretty sure it was black - show up as purple? Anything I can do in editing to fix it?

[Snakelover]

I don't know. But using Lightroom, the first thing I usually try is changing my white balance from "as shot" to "auto." A lot of times that seems to fix the weird color issues.

[Bill M]

Agree with David that it's a white balance issue.

[jerp]

I think the camera was set on "auto white balance" but I guess the uneven lighting from the fire confused it. My camera has the following white balance setttings: cloudy, shade, direct sun, incandescent, flourescent, flash and auto. For a shot like that what setting would have been better?

[scotty]

My advice is to always shoot in raw. I leave my D300 in auto white balance mode. It's easy to get the white balance right in post. I use Lightroom 2 and it's a two click deal.

[Snakelover]

I don't know the answer to that. Are you shooting in RAW or JPG? One of the great things about shooting in RAW is you can change the white balance after the shot. I let the camera set the white balance until I'm processing in Lightroom. Then if something doesn't look quite right, I just change it until it does. I don't understand much about white balance, but it's fairly easy to know the right setting when you see it.

I guess I was typing when Scotty was posting.

[Cameron]

Looks to me like y'all were just wearing a bunch of purple...Vikings fans?

[bwssr]

the fire has some odd color too

[Shane]

My advice is to always shoot in raw. I leave my D300 in auto white balance mode. It's easy to get the white balance right in post. I use Lightroom 2 and it's a two click deal.

This is what I do, so it must be wrong. Just kidding. Shoot in RAW w/auto WB and fine tune in Lr when needed. Easy to do.

[scotty]

I shoot a lot of sports under the lights. The temperature(color)of the lights is ALWAYS changing. I have to correct the WB of almost every night or indoor sports photo. This way works and it's easy.

[HUNTNETIME]

One of the first things I try to do when I know I'm going to be taking pictures in a particular location is try to snap a picture of something as "stark white" as I can find IN the environment I am going to be shooting in. Like tonight, I was taking pictures at a friend's daughter's bday party at a local restaurant. The first thing I did was snap a picture of a white bday card envelope. I chose this image for my Custom WB in the menu on my camera, then set my camera to that Custom WB setting. From there on out, my pictures had the correct white balance for the environment I was shooting in. None of that yellow tinge that so many indoor photos are plagued with. This is about as basic and simple method I can come up with to set WB...and I'm sure there's better ways, but this works pretty well for me.

[Cuz]

Nothing wrong with everyone wearing PURPLE in deer camp Jerp. Just not in our deer camp! lol

[Bluesman]

I think its a white balance issue due to the camp fire. One of those things where several settings may have settled in for the proper colors. A cloudy setting may have worked, it's hard to say. Some of the logs look purple to me on my monitor.
The fire probably gives off an entirely different spectrum than the camera can swallow automatically.

[JWHunt]

you should have put it on campfire mode

jk

yeah you just got to play with it... they might be Viking fans? you know!