Accurate Color through White Balance

Copyright © 2005-2013

Stephen T Batson Jr

Do you sometimes see less than desirable overall color in you images? 

Whether you use film or digital, have you ever wondered why sometimes color is really good in some situations and not so good in others? Most cameras will do just fine in daylight because the standard types of film and default digital camera settings are set or Balanced for daylight and flash. Other types of lighting situations such as indoor lighting, cloudy days or other mixed/special lighting situations can give you strange color casts to your images because the film type or camera settings. An example most people will be familiar with is that if you use indoor lighting such as incandescent, also known as tungsten lighting, you will get orangish looking color tones in your pictures and it's not very flattering or desirable. With Fluorescent the images can appear greenish or bluish in tone which can be even worse. And if you have daylight coming in a window but a lot of indoor light, you may see all sorts of strange tones in various parts of your image. If you shoot film, you must either buy film balanced for your lighting situation or use special filters to correct. With Digital Camera's you can either used special settings if the camera supports them or do what is called "Custom White Balance".   

Here is an article I wrote quite some time back on white balance that you may find useful.

Disclaimer

I make no claims as to the usefulness of this information to your camera or situation. This information is provide as-is, but I hope it is helpful to you. This is information is simply based on some testing of procedures found from various sources.


Description and Purpose

This information focuses on White Balance as applied to Digital Cameras and may not be applicable to all digital cameras due to feature differences or limitations. This document does not go into great detail or attempt to explain the science behind White Balance, if you have an interest in more detail, please seek out a book or other source of information that is more suited to your needs.


What is White Balance?

Simply put, from a photography standpoint various sources of light put out light of different color temperatures measured with the Kelvin scale. This can range from about 1000K up to about 18000K. Daylight is around 5500K. Tungsten Light is around 3000K. At the low end of the scale, we have Candle Light at about 1500K and at the high end we have Blue Sky which can range from 12,000K on up to about 18,000K.

If you are using film, you must use film that is balanced for the light source if you want your colors to be accurate in your images. Daylight balanced film is probably the most common since it can be used outdoors with sunlight or indoors with a flash or strobe unit that has a color temperature or close to that of daylight. With Digital, there is no film to change so the camera typically includes various white balance settings for common situations. The white balance simply gives the camera a reference point for accurate colors using a point that is considered true white. From there, the rest of the color spectrum is adjusted. These settings may include Auto, Tungsten, Flash, Cloudy, Flash, Shade, or maybe some other settings possibly including the ability to input the desired color temperature assuming you know what it is. Some may also have a custom white balance setting allowing you create a reference that the camera can use to obtain the proper white balance for a given lighting situation. With the proper White Balance, your color tones will look natural and normal. If the color balance is not correct, you can have strange color casts to your images. For example, if you had the camera white balance set for tungsten, you would likely get a blue cast if shooting in daylight. If you shoot with settings balanced for daylight but are using tungsten, you get a yellow or orange cast to your images.


Using Custom White Balance

Auto White Balance may work ok in some or maybe even most situations depending on your camera. The built-in settings for Tungsten, Florescent, Daylight, etc. may also work when properly applied to the type of lighting used. Sometimes the available settings do not work to produce the desired result producing images that have slight color casts or improper color appearance. The best way to insure that you have proper white balance, is to use the custom white balance with a measurement of the light that will be used reflected off of a white card, target or other non reflective neutral white surface. This is typically done by taking a picture of the white source and then setting the camera’s custom white balance feature to use that image as a reference. Once custom white balance is set and the camera set to use the custom white balance, images captured in that light should show the proper colors.

The following three sample images demonstrate what has been talked about so far in regards to tungsten lighting. In this situation, the camera settings, lighting condition and camera position remained fairly constant. You can see however that the auto white balance did the worst job of getting true color, the tungsten setting didn’t do well either even though the light source was tungsten lights from a ceiling light. The first two images have a terrible yellow/orange cast to them. Using the custom white balance yielded the most natural color tone to the image.

Wrapping Up

While it may still be necessary to do some minor adjustments on the computer, getting it right or as close as possible in camera can greatly reduce post processing time and effort. Also keep in mind that the less an image is altered, the better the quality of the print. Each situation and camera will be different and some situations may have better results than others when not using custom white balance. Open shade can produce images with a slight blue color cast when using auto white balance or daylight white balance. Using custom white balance with open shade can warm up the image and prevent the blue cast.



For information on a fantastic tool that helps to insure proper exposure as well as proper white balance, take a look at the Digital Calibration Targets from Photo Vision:

http://www.photovisionvideo.com/digital-targets

This is great product that I have used and tested and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting an accurate and simple way to insure proper exposure and white balance with the digital camera.


That’s it! I hope this helps. 

Basic Tips for Top Quality Prints

Repost from old Forum Feb 2008

This topic can be quite extensive if you explore each of the areas in depth. However, it’s not necessary to go into great depth to start applying these tips today to insure you get the best possible prints from your digital images.

Get it Right in the Camera

Probably the most important thing you can do to insure that you have the ability to get the best possible prints from your image, is to get as much right in the camera as possible. Make sure to do the following when shooting to capture your best:

- Nail the exposure
- Nail the White Balance via Custom White Balance to insure accurate color
- Use a tripod, monopod or fast enough shutter speed to eliminate camera shake
- Watch your focus, make sure it’s sharp. Unintended soft images can make for unattractive prints even if everything else is good.

Minimize Adjustments in Photoshop or other Image Editors

Avoid thinking or saying to yourself, "Oh, I can fix that later in Photoshop". Maybe you can, but if you shoot 500 images, do you really want to adjust each one? Also consider this, ANY adjustment you make in your favorite image editor has the potential for reducing your image quality. Reduced image quality translates to lower print quality. Basic things such as spot removal, cleaning up a blemish, etc. are usually fine if done correctly. The following changes on the computer can significantly reduce quality if care is not used:

- Color Adjustments of any kind
- Exposure / Brightness / Contrast Adjustments
- Other Miscellaneous Image Adjustments
- Excessive Cropping

Now understand, I'm not saying you shouldn't use Photoshop or some Image Editor, they are very powerful tools and I wouldn't be doing digital without one. However, just be careful and be away of the possible issues it can case and the time it can waste if you use it as a crutch to fix would you could have prevented. Do you want to be a Photoshop wizard, or a Great Photographer?

Let the Lab do what they do best

Use a Pro Lab, or a lab that you know will look at and correct each image individually. They are experts, they do this every day, all day long and have much better software and equipment to determine correct color and adjustments than we do. Many consumer labs just let the machine automatically determine what changes to make based the system settings to get acceptable results for the average image. The problem with this is that some color and lighting situations can throw the machine off. A skilled lab technician looking and adjusting each image will insure you get the best prints possible that your images can produce and the colors and exposure are accurate.

Many photographers, both Pro and Amateur , promote calibrating monitor, using the labs printer profile and calibrating to the lab so that you can adjust your images and have them print with no changes. This gives you ultimate control over what your final prints will look like. And, in some cases, it can save a little money if the lab discounts for uncorrected prints. This is a fantastic option, and there is nothing wrong with it at all, and is important if you are doing certain types of creative changes to image color, brightness, contrast, etc. for artistic reasons that may not be understood by the lab tech without special instructions. The problem is, it can be time consuming, complicated, and you must calibrate everything on a regular basis to insure nothing has changed. The other problem is, that if you go through all of the calibration steps, adjust your images and don’t tell them to leave corrections off of your images, or if they don’t allow that option, you have wasted all of your time calibrating, using profiles, and tweaking your images since they are going to adjust to what they think is correct. Some images may look like they do on your screen, and some may not. The point here is, a good lab will know what colors should look like for typical people shots, landscapes, etc. Let them do their job. And if you need to, give them special instructions.

The bottom line here is, this is what we had to do with film, but now with digital, we feel that we need to adjust each image. But that simply is not the case. If you want, to great! But if you are busy and more concerned with shooting pictures and enjoying prints, let the lab do what they’ve always done. Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t necessarily mean you SHOULD.

Are you afraid to Shoot in RAW?

Copyright © 2005-2013

Stephen T Batson Jr

(Repost from Forum - April 2007)

And no, not talking about shooting in the nude! ;)

Note: This article may not apply to you if you are taking pictures with a camera phone or point & shoot camera which typically only save the images as JPEG files. However, if you are using a Digital SLR or other professional quality digital camera this probably does apply to you.

I'm going to stir things up a bit here. The reason I feel this will stir things up is that many advanced level photographers or professionals will point out that how they do their photography works perfectly fine for them. Hey, if that's the case more power to them. I just want to state for the record, that there is a reason that the camera makers provided the RAW file format. One can argue as much as they want about why they don't want to use camera RAW mode, but the bottom line is, the Camera RAW file is highly superior to JPEG files. So regardless of you level of expertise as a photographer and what your current reasoning is if you don't shoot in RAW mode, read this article and give it some thought, better yet, give it a shot!

Come on, admit it! If you aren't using RAW files with your Digital camera and it supports them, you are afraid, you missed something or  you are simply making excuses. You know it's true. And no I'm not trying to be rude or mean. I'm trying to get you to think about a few things and maybe, just maybe, convince you to make the switch.

Here's some of excuses I've heard:

- I don't know how to use RAW files, I've never done it before
- They take up to much space
- They slow the camera down

And here's a biggie that mostly experienced photographers and professionals will throw around.

- It complicates the workflow too much and slows me down.

Now here's my repsonse to each of these concerns.

"I don't know how to use RAW files, I've never done it before"

Spend 5 minutes with your camera's manual and a few minutes with the help in your imaging program such as photoshop that supports RAW files. Or worst case, a few minutes with the free software that came with your camera that supports RAW files

"They take up to much space"

Ok, you just spent at least $1000 (several hundred on a decent consumer point and shoot digital) and probably a lot more on your camera to take great pictures and you want to skimp on your memory cards? Come on!!! Memory is cheap when you consider how much it saves you over film. You can get 32 gig cards for under $100 today. With RAW files, that's still equivalent several rolls of film on many cameras and you can use it over and over and over. If you are a professional or avid shooter, buy enough cards hold you until you can download to computer or storage device.

"They slow the camera down"

Maybe in some cases, but with most of the Digital SLRs you have a buffer that lets you shoot from about 6 to 9 images before you have to wait for the camera to finishing saving to the card, so this becomes less of an issue. So unless you are shooting sports or doing a lot of rapid fire shooting that RAW files are truly slowing you down or preventing you from getting the shots you need, shooting RAW may still be the better way to go.

"It complicates the workflow too much and slows me down"

Ok, I'll say that it "Changes" the work flow slightly, but it doesn't have to slow us down. As serious photographers, our goal should always be to get the best image we can both in camera and after the fact. Most of the cameras that can shoot raw files also came with software that will allow us to work on them, and/or convert the images to jpegs which is where they will usually end up before they go to the lab. If we do our job right to begin with, and get the images as close to what they should be in camera, we can do a batch convert to jpeg and be ready to crop and print. Go get a cup of coffee or do something else you need to be doing anyway while the computer does the batch convert. It doesn't take that long and let's face it, we always have something else productive that can be done while running a batch convert that is going to take several minutes. Once we have the jpegs, our workflow doesn't change. And better yet, many of the newer cameras allow us to shoot RAW+JPEG. That means you can just copy the RAW files off to to a storage area and only work with JPEG files unless a RAW file is needed.

Ok now that I've addressed the concerns and excuses, I'm going to promote the benefits a bit more.

When you a need to correct exposure, white balance, contrast and a host of other typical post processing tasks, doing so in a RAW file lets you do a better job since you have all of the original information in the image. In fact with white balance, which can be a biggie if you shot with the wrong settings or the camera just didn't get it quite right, you can correct with absolutely no loss in image quality. When we do major tweaking a non-raw file, the more we tweak, the more we risk loosing quality in the image. It may not be a lot in some cases, but it may be bad in others. We want to be able to go back to what the camera actually captured, instead of a jpeg that was converted in camera and a lot of information tossed out.

What if the one shot that needs serious correction is a jpeg and is the money making shot, you just know it. But it's just too far off in one or more areas to adjust and really get the quality you need? Yeah, maybe you can do some magic in photoshop, but if you are striving for excellence, you'd have a much better chance of getting the best if you had a RAW file to work with and it would take much less time. Think about that when your concerns of slowing the workflow down come up.

Some labs are even starting to process from RAW files. Come on, you know it. You know you have been avoiding it because of what others have said, or because you are afraid. Just take a few hours, do some tests of your own. Shoot a daylight image with white balance set for tungsten as a jpeg and another as a raw image. Shoot the same subject so you can compare. Now, take 30 seconds to correct the raw image to daylight. Now see how long it takes to do on the jpeg, if you can even get close. And don't even think about telling me that you would never, ever shoot with the white balance or other setting set incorrectly. Don't even go there!!! We all make mistakes and so do you. The point is, shooting raw is much more forgiving than jpeg and there's nothing wrong with that, especially when our images are important to us. Using JPEG compared to RAW is like throwing away your negatives on film. You figure what the heck, you can always make a copy of your print if you need to fix something. It just isn't the same.

A final note about RAW files. Since they contain all of the information captured by the camera, when you make common adjustments to the RAW file before outputting to JPEG or other format to be used for  printing or other purpose requiring high resolution, you getting a much higher quality. This can make a huge difference.

The choice is yours.

Canon 5D Mark II Mini Review

(Repost from Old Forum - October 2011)

This is a great camera! I won't try to list out and cover each feature, there's plenty of other places you can read that information. I just want to give a quick note on my take of this excellent camera.

The full frame and high resolution of this camera combined with the Higher ISO settings and greatly reduced noise at the higher ISO settings compared to my previous cameras is outstanding! The Canon 10D is quite noisy when you get 800 or higher. The 30D is much better than the 10D noise wise even at higher ISO settings and when combined with software noise reduction, images can be pretty good. When I compare my 5D Mark II to the 10D, I want to say, "What Noise?!". This that much improved. I have no issue shooting up to 1600 or 3200 for normal shooting. In lower lighting, Going up to the max ISO so I don't need to use a flash and can get decent shutter speeds to hand hold have worked very well.

I honestly haven't used the HD video all that much, I didn't really buy the camera for that, but it's a nice plus if needed.

Bottom line in this camera, the Images are Sharp, the Noise is Low and it's well worth it's price! I do sometimes miss the benefit of the crop factor on my lenses fully zoomed in, but that is easily made up with using the appropriate lens and the ability to crop in much closer than with my previous cameras.

Excellent Camera that I don't regret buying for a second!

Welcome to The Digital Photographer Zone Blog

After a lot of thought, it's been decided to go to a blog format for the Digital Photographer Zone and eliminate the forum completely. This is mainly due to the lack of participation in the forums as well as some technical problems with the software and the hosting account it's running on. As I role this out, I will start out with copying some of the content from the forum here if feel it will valuable to others. That will help to quickly add content as well preserve valuable information. I have not yet decided if I will allow comments to the blog or not as I had a problem with spammers in the forums and I want to avoid that here. So, let's see what happens and be on the lookout for new and regularly updated content soon as I feel the blog will simplify the process of posting new and exciting information.

Enjoy!