Changing the color of a white background.......

This is the lighting diagram

Double-click the diagram to see it full size.


It 's a cool fact that you can change the background color by changing the color temperature of either the light source falling on the background or changing the color temperature of the camera (if using a digital camera) or of the film (if using film).

The setup was simple. Equipment used: Nikon D300 digital camera. 100 watt tungsten light bulb in a parabolic reflector (garage clamp-light from Wal-mart), white foam-core board (22" x 28"),
Nikon SB-800 flash triggered from main camera.

The subject (Ashlee) was placed about 3 feet in front of the camera. Ashlee was about six feet in front of the white foam-core. The 100 Watt light bulb was the only light hitting the subject. Metering the subject position measured about f/5.6 @ 1/20 second, so the camera was placed in MANUAL at f/5.6 and shutter speed of 1/20 th second.
By the way, the ambient meter is a Minolta AutoMeter IV F. It is a great meter for finding out the flash value and ambient value, plus it has memories and averages, and a lot of stuff I don't even use.

The on-board flash was raised and put in commander mode. I dialed down the camera flash to --- which means it only puts out enough flash (IR) to trigger the SB-800. I dialed down the SB-800 to 1/32 power in manual mode. I did this from the camera.

Now in order to get the color to change from white to blue, I had to change the camera setting to a LOWER temperature. Normal daylight and flash temperature is about 5500, or thereabout.
The color temperature of the light bulb is around 3200 degrees Kelvin, so I dialed in 3230 on the white balance temperature scale to match the light bulb. So, Ashlee has light falling on her that matches the camera, so she will be temperature balanced. With the difference between the flash (5600) and the camera at 3230 degrees Kelvin, the background looks blue.

The resulting photograph is shown above.