Photodigitary

A Continuing Story on White Balance

One of the most consistent challenges I see digital photographers facing is with white balance. I just had a great question about custom white balance from one of my BetterPhoto.com classes that I thought I should add to this blog.

Color is very important to me. When I was editor of Outdoor Photographer magazine, I spent a lot of time with the art director on reviewing images on proofs from the printer. A slight color cast one way or another could really damage the look of a nature photo, although all photography is affected. Ansel Adams once said that he really disliked color prints because he could never really get the color casts controlled the way he wanted.

I have worked in video production and white balance was something we did every time we shot. I had shot color film professionally when doing work for companies — getting good color was a pain when shooting industrial sorts of images. With video, it was much easier because you could balance the camera to the light rather than trying to filter the light to somehow make it look right on film. So when digital came out with white balance control, I was really excited because it meant the possibility of accurate color without unwanted color casts in nearly any light (there are some lights with incomplete spectrums that cannot be “white balanced”).

So back to custom white balance — is something that can be used all the time? This is not a simple question to answer. As I have written before, I do not recommend shooting auto white balance (AWB). Most of my books on taking pictures go over white balance in some detail, too. Some things to consider that lead up to the answer for custom white balance all the time:

1. AWB is inconsistent. If you change your focal length, change angles to the subject, etc., white balance often changes from shot to shot. This then becomes a workflow problem later, plus it is very unprofessional to submit such images with varying color casts to them to a publication.

2. AWB is often a compromise.

3. RAW WB can be changed later (so can JPEG, though there can be a quality cost to doing that), but then that still means a workflow issue, plus the challenge of having to decide every shot’s WB.

4. Setting a WB locks down the response of the camera to the light and gives a consistency to colors.

5. Using a gray card or white card for a custom white balance is great for difficult light but might not be right for every shot.

I like being able to use custom white balance when the color of the light is challenging. It can even be helpful to white balance on a bluish card (get a paint sample from Home Depot or Lowe’s) to warm up scenes on cloudy days or in deep shade.

My student had tried a test shooting several white balance settings of the same scene. The custom white balance looked “cool” compared to the others. Now this is an important thing to keep in mind. White balance, color casts, cool or warm, is relative and has a lot to do with our perceptions and how we see the world. There is no such thing as an arbitrarily correct white balance, although you can certainly have some very wrong ones!

It is not that the custom setting was cool for this student’s experiments, but that it was the most neutral for the grays in the shots. That made it look cool compared to the warm grays of the other shots. The image was shot with a low winter sunlight, which we expect to be warm. So when it is neutral, it looks cool to us. The colors are “correct” but yet they are not visually correct because the color of the light has been removed. In this case, custom white balance is inappropriate.

White balance is an important tool for the digital photographer. It is worth spending some time with doing a few experiments so that you know how your camera responds to light at different settings and how you respond to the results.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, nature photography | 1 Comment »

Cold and cameras

I am in Maine now visiting relatives. I was out this morning photographing the new snow and it was a cold 5 degrees F with a bit of a windchill. It brought me back to my years photographing in Minnesota winter.

The cold has very little effect on cameras these days. I was not out long enough to affect battery power (cold can reduce the time you can get from a battery, so usually you need at least two). There can be a problem when you first go outside, especially if it is snowing or there is blowing snow. What happens is the warm camera hits the snow and the snow melts. Many cameras today are well sealed against the moisture, such as my Olympus E-3 and Canon 40D, which is really helpful. But a problem can be water on the lens which then freezes.

As I returned to my sister’s home, I remembered something very important. You never want to bring a cold camera directly into a warm house or car. Think about what happens when you take a cold glass of water into a warm room — you get condensation. Condensation is not a good thing with cameras. While a sealed camera like the E-3 has less of a problem, many cameras can get that condensation occuring inside the camera and even the lens (which can happen on any camera). That moisture can raise havoc with internal circuits, plus it can freeze if you go outside again, and ice inside the camera is even worse.

The best thing is to warm up the camera gradually without direct contact to the moist inside air. I got a plastic garbage bag from my sister and put the camera and camera bag inside it while I was still outside. Then I came in with the bag. A zippered, tight camera bag will also work.

Just be aware of the problem of condensation and don’t allow a cold camera into a warm space without protecting it.

Posted in Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts, landscape photography, nature photography | 2 Comments »

Better Photos?

One thing that most photographers try to do, including me, is to make “better” photos. That is, after all, even the name of the online workshops that I do some work with, BetterPhoto.com. There is definitely value in trying to improve our technique so that we can better use our cameras and software.

But sometimes our striving for “better photos” can lead us astray. I know this to be true from my past as well as working with students in workshops. People want to do “better” photos for a class to satisfy the instructor, to impress other students, to win accolades with a prize, and so forth. The problem with this is that it implies you do a lot of bad or not so good photos. That can be discouraging and can lead your inner critic to attack you for not being good enough. That inner critic can be vicious at times, too. I have had students severely critical of their own work, sometimes to the degree that they don’t want to share it or they make all sorts of excuses (not needed) for how “bad” or “unfinished” it is.

I think that is sad because I truly believe that everyone has something unique to see about the world and to share that through their photography. Sure, it is true that we all have varying skills in how we handle the camera and technology. But we need to focus on what is important about our pictures to us, not how well they stack up against others or some arbitrary standard of good, better, and best.

I sometimes do a program about focus — focus and sharpness is important in photography, but often we forget to focus ourselves. What is really important about your photography … to you? Not how good is your equipment, not how much you can impress camera club members — although these things can be fun as long as they don’t distract you from the deeper connection of you to your subject and what photography means to you.

This really is a personal thing. I think you discover this personal focus by taking a lot of pictures and looking at what is important about them. What do they say about you? What do they say about how you see the world? That can be a little unnerving at times, I know, if you are not comfortable with how you are seeing the world with your photography. Yet, you do have something that is special to you, something worth sharing about the world through your photographs.

You may want or even need to learn better ways of handling your camera, of using photo techniques, of refining composition, of optimizing images in Photoshop and Lightroom, but these don’t necessarily make better photographs if they don’t better connect you with the world and how you want to share it with others. I believe this is key for all photographers, yet your personal visual connection to the world can be damaged if you pay too much attention to what others think or what you think would make others approve of your shots.

That isn’t to say that what others think is unimportant. If you are selling photographs, for example, others have to care about your images. If you are trying to communicate something special about a subject and the image doesn’t do that for others, then that is a problem. What I am saying is that as photographers, we all need to pay attention to our own ways of seeing the world, our own needs for our photography and our own special ways of sharing what we see of the world for others. If we are to truly make the “best” photographs, they must come from our personal focus about who we are and what our photography is about.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, nature photography | 5 Comments »

Getting the Most from the Sensor You Have

It is all well and good to debate the merits of camera brands, sensor sizes and types and so on. That is fun for a camera club meeting. But ultimately, everyone of us has to deal with a reality — we have a camera with one sensor and we must get the most out of it. I have no interest in being sad that I don’t own the latest hot camera because that does me no good in taking pictures. I can’t afford to buy every new camera that comes out, nor can I afford having a camera system from every major brand.

My challenge is always to get the most out of the cameras I have. When I was editor of Outdoor Photographer and PCPhoto, I used to try out all the latest cameras. I don’t have that sort of time any more, plus there is a problem in doing that — you can never be as familiar with your camera as you should be because it is constantly changing. But I can say that truly all cameras out on the market today do an amazing job of capturing digital images.

So how do you get the most out of your camera and its sensor? I think one key is to become intimately familiar with the camera. This comes from shooting a lot of pictures, even if in your backyard. There is no cost to doing this, but big benefits. It helps to understand what you camera can and cannot do. I know, for example, that my Olympus E-3 does a fantastic job at ISO settings of 400 and less, but starts to show its small sensor size at high ISO settings (noise increases). I know my Canon 40D does a much better job at higher ISO settings, so if I need the speed, that is the camera to use.

It also helps to intimately know how to quickly change settings. I go from manual to autofocus a lot with close-up work, so I know exactly which buttons and dials to use. This sort of knowledge means you can concentrate on the photograph and not the camera, which helps you stay focused on getting optimum quality from the shot.

A big deal for me is getting the most sharpness possible from a lens. This does not mean buying a new camera. One of the worst causes of unsharpness and low image quality is camera movement during exposure, even for me. I don’t care how many megapixels you have or what the tech websites say about your sensor, an image is useless and cannot be used large with even a slight bit of camera movement. I use a sturdy tripod (and, yes, Gitzo is expensive, but I find their carbon fiber tripods are an outstanding investment — one quality Gitzo will do more for image quality than any new sensor). I also really like image stabilization (in camera for the E-3 and in lenses for the 40D) when I am not using a tripod — it can make a huge difference. I also use it when traveling light with a lighter tripod.

Another issue is exposure. Even the latest and greatest sensors will give you problems with noise if you underexpose your shot. You cannot use your LCD for judging exposure unless you have done some tests. You must check your histogram and also see what images look like downloaded to your computer. When you know they are correct, see what those images look like on the LCD — that will give you an idea of correct exposure. Unfortunately, manufacturers tend to make their LCD’s display dark images brighter than they really are because they think that makes photographers happy — it also causes underexposure.

Underexposure causes noise to be a problem when you brighten that photo, but it also causes problems with light and color. You can lose the richness of dark tones if they are exposed too dark, plus you will lose nuances of light and color will be compromised. The best color and light is exposed in the middle range of a sensor. If you have a big gap to the right side of your histogram, you are underexposing an image and getting less than you paid for from your camera because you are not using the sensor optimally.

You sometimes hear the idea of exposing to the right, meaning to expose so your histogram is weighted to the right. This can be helpful as it ensures you will have the least amount of noise problems. However, I have heard this taken too far, that you should actually slightly overexpose an image because that data can be recovered in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. That sort of statement comes from a computer person, not a longtime photographer. Such an exposure moves your key tones and colors out of the best sensitivity of your sensor, meaning you are getting less than the best from that sensor.

Exposure needs to be enough that important dark tones are not underexposed, yet important light tones are not too bright. If an image largely has middle tones, then the exposure should reflect that, neither giving too much nor too little exposure, if you want to get the most from your sensor.

Good exposure and proper sharpness mean you can easily get the most from a sensor. This is especially important if you want to enlarge your image file for big prints.

Posted in Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts, nature photography | Comments Off

Megapixel Urban Legends

You will hear a lot of “stuff” about megapixels, especially about what pros use for publications. There are a whole lot of “urban legends” around that both photographers and editors believe, that might not be true, but do affect the industry. While some pros go to larger megapixel cameras because they think that gives more image quality (it doesn’t automatically do that), many are interested in the added features that these cameras introduce, such as better autofocus or wireless flash capabilities or advanced internal processing, and so forth.

There is no such thing as a preferred arbitrary size of image that is used by all publications, for example. I can guarantee that a 20 MP image that is boring, no matter how technically good it is, and has no appeal to an editor will never be published. Yet a 6 MP image that is exciting and has benefit to an editor will sell. That obviously influences what a photographer does.

I have had a 3 MP photo published as a two-page spread, which many people will say is impossible (obviously not). My friend, Bob Krist, has had 6 MP photos published regularly in National Geographic Traveler, even two-page spreads. Six megapixel was really a turning point for digital image quality, where it began to match 35mm film for publication work.

A lot of editors are still clueless about digital image quality. So they arbitrarily pick numbers such as 12 MP, 18 MP and so forth, because it is easy to do that and the numbers sound impressive.

Image quality in the digital world is far more than megapixels. I regularly shoot an Olympus E-3, a 10 MP camera with a smaller format size of Four Thirds. I challenge anyone to look at my photos in Outdoor Photographer magazine, for example, and see any difference between them and larger megapixel cameras.

Posted in Digital camera techniques, Equipment thoughts, nature photography | 7 Comments »

Colors and white balance

Try shooting a scene with several white balance settings. You will see different color results and this points out an interesting challenge for photographers. What is correct color? Color that matches the original subjects? Color that matches the scene (believe it or not, these are two different things)? Color that interprets your feelings about the scene? Color that gives a creative interpretation of the scene?

Color is not an “absolute” — it is influenced by many things. You can see this for yourself by taking a bright color and putting white or black next to it. Color is influenced by our brain’s memory of colors that we know — for example, we see green grass as a consistent color because of our expectations, even if the light is changing its actual color. Such memory colors have a huge impact on how we see colors in our world.

Color is also influenced by the conditions, such as colors at sunrise or sunset — we will see a color in the shade at that time differently depending on whether our vision includes only that shade (it will be more neutral) or if our vision sees some of the warm sunlight (the color will look more blue).

As a photographer, we are interpreters of the world. We have to decide what is appropriate to our subjects, our goals for a particular photograph and how we wish to impact the viewer of a photograph.

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques | 3 Comments »

A Photo Book

A friend of mine, Jim Miotke, has a great book for photographers who are challenged by digital and want some answers – The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography (published by Amphoto). As the founder and leader of BetterPhoto.com, Jim has had a lot of real-world contact with the average photographer, where his or her problems are, what the challenges are, and so forth. He used this information to good effect with this book.

To be honest, and in the interest of full disclosure, Jim is a friend, as I said, and he approached me about helping him to “get the word out” about his book for a special one-day promotion. I agreed to help because his book does demystify a lot of technical topics with clear, simple lessons.

If you order Jim’s book today, Tuesday, December 2^nd, you can get a bunch of extra goodies. Jim has partnered with several photography companies and individuals to put together a special promotion that includes some unique bonus extras.  He put together a special link for me to send readers to learn more about this special event:

http://www.betterphoto.com/offer-rob.asp

You’ll probably see this in other locations as Jim really did put together a special deal for one day. It is a fascinating use of the web. If you are interested, click on the link. JIm also promises to return the favor to his friends at some point!

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Return to White Balance

The issue of auto white balance still keeps coming up. I consistently see poorer color than should be in photos because of auto white balance used by students in my classes at BetterPhoto.com. I understand that white balance is still somewhat of a new concept for many photographers, that manufacturers must use auto for a default (to make the digital photo experience easier for most casual photographers), that you can change RAW easily in its white balance, and so on. But from what I see, photographers are consistently getting less than the best color because they are shooting in auto white balance.

This is especially true at sunrise and sunset. Auto white balance wants to get rid of some of that color (although newer cameras have internal processing to try to combat that). You will get inconsistent color and less colorful sunrises and sunsets when you shoot with auto white balance. Plus, you will often find that more subtle sunrises and sunsets just die with auto white balance.

One of the reasons for this is that we are used to seeing sunrise and sunset photos look a certain way (this is about the photos, not the reality). Most published photos of sunrise and sunset from the past were shot with Kodachrome or Velvia film. These films were not color-balanced (the equivalent of white balance) for the light at these times, so they made the sunrise and sunset colors warmer and more intense. That’s what was published, that’s what people expect sunrise and sunset to look like. You will get something closer to a traditional color image of these times if you set your camera to Cloudy or Shady. An image that is probably closer to the way we actually see a sunrise or sunset is probably Daylight white balance (although this is going to depend on the camera and your perception of the sunrise or sunset).

Posted in Digital Photo Techniques, Digital camera techniques, Uncategorized, landscape photography, nature photography | 2 Comments »