White Balance and Overall colour

This is something that I find very interesting in that you can change the whole look of a photograph by using the correct white balance, although I tend to keep my camera on auto white balance and even on programme if I am walking between places I want to photograph ( I was at a talk by Gavin Hoy who recommended doing this as he said it is better to get the shot than miss it) I then reset my camera when I get to where I am going and carry on.

What I also find interesting is that where you would normally refer to red as warm and blue as cold it works the other way round when you are talking about colour temperature.
Colour temperature is measured using the Kelvin scale, most cameras will allow you to set the white balance and DSLR cameras will allow you to custom the white balance, allowing you to accurately photograph the scene t o do this you need to meter a piece of white card or a patch of white in the scene.
These adjustments and others can also be carried out in the processing stage if you shot in raw.

For the first part of the  exercise I  need to photograph a scene or a person and do four versions using auto white balance, sunlight, cloudy and open shade on a sunny day. In place of a person I used my dog who is quite happy to be included in fact she is often includes herself even if I didn't want her in.

This is my dog in the garden I have used auto white balance for this photograph the rest of the settings are F8 @ 1/1000's the colour is not too bad on this but its not quite as I saw it.

The next one was using the shady white balance this looks really odd as the colour is almost yellowy and not at all as it should be I have artificial grass in my garden and the colour is nothing like this at all, the rest of the settings are F8 @ 1/200's.

Photograph three is using the cloudy white balance the colours on this are not too bad the grass is ok and her colours are reasonable but not quite correct, the rest of the settings are F8 @ 1/250's

the final photograph in this set is on the sunny white balance, this one shows the best temperature and the colours as I saw them, the grass is the correct colour and so is the dog, her fur is almost cream which is how it should. the rest of the settings used are F8 @ 1/200's.

The next set of photographs are taken when the weather is cloudy which it is alot at the moment but its a shame the sky's are so dull with very little actual cloud formations and mostly just all one colour. As the clouds are so uninteresting at the moment I decided to walk around my own garden and see what was around, I found these berries and thought it would be interesting to see how by changing the white balance it would change the feel of the photograph and also the colour of the berries.

This first photograph is taken on the auto white balance setting you can see that that camera has tried to chose the best setting but it is not quite correct, I decided to use a  fairly wide aperture of F6.3 on these photographs as I thought the most import part was the berries and who the different white balances changed them.

The next one was the sunny white balance this gave the photograph a sort of orangey tone to it I quite liked this effect though.

The third one was the shady white balance this time it seems as if by using this setting the photograph was really warmed up in an odd way almost as if it had been lit.

The final photograph was taken with the correct cloudy white balance the berries are the correct shade and the wall seen in the bottom left is also correct in colour as a faded terracotta colour.

The final photographs were taken at my mums as I said in my previous post about dynamic range.

The first one again I started with the auto white balance again its ok but nothing great it will be interesting to see how the greens in the photographs change with the different white balances as there was a few different ones in the area I picked to photograph.

The cloudy white balance has again given the photograph a slightly different look the bottom left of the photograph looks almost yellow in a way it almost looks like the sun is shinning over the whole photograph which it wasn't.

Interestingly on the third photograph where the sunny white balance was used the colour isn't too bad, I had tried to keep the sunny part of the photograph to a minimum I just wanted to show that the majority of the photograph was in the shade.

Finally the fourth one and again this has been taken using the correct white balance setting of shady

Looking at the greens I spoke about at the beginning of these four photographs I can see the various a lot better in the colours.

So what have I learnt so far? I think the biggest thing I have learnt on this white balance exercise is that you need to chose the right white balance to suit the photograph in order to avoid getting a colour cast, I remember doing a similar exercise to this in the art of photography and I photographed my husband outside with different white balances at different times of the day, looking at some of the photographs I wasn't sure whether to take him straight to the doctors as he looked a very funny colour.

On to the second part of the exercise and i need to photograph  an indoor/outdoor scene at dusk making sure that the room is lit with incadescent lighting of the old fashioned kind of bulbs rather than modern cfls, , I need to take the same photograph three times using three different white balances which are: sunlight tungsten/incadescent and auto.
As is usual for me I started with the auto white balance as I find it interesting to see how the camera 'sees' the  colour temperature of the room.

With the auto white balance setting there was a slight gold/orange colour cast to the photograph, which if you didn't know the  room you may find acceptable although if you look at the white paint work the colour cast is very noticable.

The sunlight one was completely wrong the room looked really orange and the colour cast was so noticeable on the white paintwork, I would find this photograph unacceptable if it was given to me.

The final photograph was taken on the correct tungsden/incadescent setting, this time there is no colour cast the white looks fine (it was never a brilliant white) I would find this photograph acceptable as far as colour temperature goes.

This has really been an interesting exercise to almost repeat from the Art of Photography but I feel I understand it even more now and can really see the difference choosing the correct white balance setting has over the picture, this is something I will be paying particular attention to in future.

Finally as I shoot in raw I took the auto white balance photograph and experimented with the white balance slider taking it from 4250 to 3500 to produce a compromise photograph.

This does still have a slight colour cast to it but I would accept it more than some of the others particularly the sunshine one.

Scene Dynamic Range

As previous exercise I am waiting for some sunshine this could be a long wait! Well the weather has improved slightly and I decided to take a trip to whitstable somewhere I can normally get at least a few photographs, I must admit it was one of the coldest days I have ever been there but I managed to get a few shots and a warming hot chocolate along the way.

Of all the photographs I took I finally decided to use just one this is my choice for having a fairly flat image or low dynamic range

The whole scene metered at F13 I took the photograph then spot metered the bright cloud at F16 and the shadow area by the groynes at F9 this only makes 5 stops including 1/3 stops.  I was hoping to get some further shots of Whistable but once again the weather didn't want to be kind to me and I realised after about 3 and a half hours that it would not get any better and that would be it for the day.

Well the weather is finally starting to be a bit kinder and I have managed to get a few more photographs

This one was taken early in the morning on my way to work the sun was just starting to come up the main part metered F11 with the brightest part metering at F40 and the darkest at 6.3 this really did show a very high dynamic range of 16 stops including 1/3 stops this was also using my lens at 200mm if I kept it at 18mm it would not have been possible to get these figures.

A chance morning call to my mum lead to the next two photographs and also one for the white balance exercise, she mentioned that the fox had been walking through her garden this morning and also about the light in her garden after telling her to put the kettle on I grabbed my camera and went to see her, luckily she only lives a few minutes from me, the fox had gone but the light was beautiful.

The scene above metered F16 @ 1/40's this was quite interesting as I metered this on manual by adjusting the f stop and shutter speed until the camera showed the exposure to be correct I think it looks a bit bright although the histogram was fine, I have adjusted the clarity very slightly in raw but other than that no other adjustments have been made. The bright area of the bird bath metered at F40 and the darkest shadow area metered at F6.3 so as with the photograph above I got a wide dynamic range.

The next photograph was taken walking back down the garden, I must admit this one is not one of my favourites but I have included it as I feel I really need to push on with the course now. The dynamic range of this photograph is between  F6.3 and F32 is 14 stops again this includes 1/3 stops.

There is one final photograph to take for this section and I am hoping I might get a half decent sunset or maybe just an early evening sky would be nice.

No sunset or early evening sky for me unfortunately but I did photograph this beautiful statue,

 There was not a huge dynamic range to this photograph with the average reading of the scene being F16  the brightest part F22 and the darkest part F13 giving a dynamic range of 6 stops including thirds of stops. I was quite surprised by the metering of this scene as I had expected it to be more I thought the shadow area would be a lot darker than it was.

I am glad I have finally finished this exercise not because I found it difficult to understand but because it took so long to get the best conditions available to me at the time, even leaving this one to one side and carrying on with the white balance exercise I still knew it had to be done and found it frustrating.