http://www.momshots.com/balancing-your-colors/ Learning to photograph our children. Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:51:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 http://www.momshots.com/balancing-your-colors/#comment-752 Eliece Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:17:50 +0000 http://www.momshots.com/?p=566#comment-752 I just found your site and love it. I love the b&w close up of your son, Mag, even tough I missed the out of focus part. I want to be able to take better pics of my kids and am glad that there are such sites with tutorials and inspiration. Your photos are amazing! Thanks! I just found your site and love it. I love the b&w close up of your son, Mag, even tough I missed the out of focus part. I want to be able to take better pics of my kids and am glad that there are such sites with tutorials and inspiration. Your photos are amazing! Thanks!

]]> http://www.momshots.com/balancing-your-colors/#comment-507 Clint Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:30:19 +0000 http://www.momshots.com/?p=566#comment-507 Sorry, I meant to mention this in the previous comment. The shot of the boys looks a little cold to me (if you look at the whites of their eyes, they are actually blueish). Again, I don't know if that is a bad thing, it really comes down to what you feel is a good temp for the picture you are taking and what kind of feeling you are trying to portray. Sorry, I meant to mention this in the previous comment. The shot of the boys looks a little cold to me (if you look at the whites of their eyes, they are actually blueish). Again, I don’t know if that is a bad thing, it really comes down to what you feel is a good temp for the picture you are taking and what kind of feeling you are trying to portray.

]]> http://www.momshots.com/balancing-your-colors/#comment-506 Clint Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:25:43 +0000 http://www.momshots.com/?p=566#comment-506 Hey Jessica, Thanks for the shout out and the great compliments. I think it is wonderful what you are doing here on your blog. I know it can be hard sometimes because it seems like you aren't getting feedback. I have this issue with Flickr, 100+ views and not a single comment. The only advice I can give is keep with it. A blog can be a lot like a radio program broadcasted in the middle of the night. Most of the time you are wondering if anybody is listening, but there is that moment when somebody can't sleep (much like how I can't sleep tonight) and they are affected in a good way based on what you say, or learn something they need to better their lives. I know it takes time to do these things, but there are many benefits that you probably won't notice for years. If nothing else, you have an anthology of your photographic journey. Lastly, the picture at the end is preceous. It looks like the "focus" is actually camera blur. One of the best moves I ever did was getting a 50mm prime lens with a 1.8 f stop. It gives you great depth of field, it's inexpensive and it gives you a lot of leeway indoors without needing to use on camera flash. I got mine for $75 (crazy cheap for a lens) and it's one of my go to lenses. Also, I'm trying to post that article here, but I'm not sure how. If you want to repost it, here is the article: Have you ever taken a picture and had whites turn blue or yellow? This is due to a setting called white balance. Depending on your camera, there are many different options. Most all of them come with the ability to use an auto white balance, several preset settings for typical situations and the seemingly scary and often under used custom white balance. The idea behind white balance is that white is interpreted differently based on the source of the light being reflected on the subject you are photographing. Even sunlight changes throughout the day. Colors at high noon look different from the same colors in the early morning or at sunset. Also, the same colors look different when you bring them inside under a fluorescent light or incandescent (tungsten) light. Now lets discuss the settings on your camera. Auto white balance: A lot of people use this setting even though it often produces unpredictable results. What is happening is that your camera tries to identify something that is white or grey in the frame to use as a reference point for all the other colors there. You can get bad results if your camera picks something that is yellowish or bluish and thinks it is white. Also, if there is a "bright" color that is not white, your camera will often think that is white and throws all the other colors off. You may have experienced this if you are outside and take a picture of somebody in the shade with direct sunlight in the background. The good news is that there is a solution. One solution is to use the presets on your camera to help your camera to guess more accurately what is true white. The presets are usually: direct sunlight, cloudy, tungsten, and flourescent. Some cameras also have a preset for shadow and direct sunlight together (the icon usually looks like a white house with lines coming off of it like a shadow), they also have a setting for something that is measured in Kelvin. The idea is that you get to be the computer and figure what light is reflecting off of your subject. Usually, if you are inside and in a room that receives most of it's light from your traditional light bulb, you would use tungsten, if you are environmentally conscience and have compact fluorescent light bulbs, then you would pick fluorescent. If the room is being lit by a window, then you would use the cloudy setting. Though these presets aren't completely accurate, they will get your colors more accurate more often than with auto white balance. Now lets talk about custom white balance. The way this works is you take a picture of a grey or white card or a premade target like this one: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/longimaging/3087779358/] and you set it as the reference point for your whites. This works best if you are taking a portrait and you have the time to set it up in your camera. Now, considering my audience, kids usually don't wait for you to whip out that camera, take a picture of a card and set the white balance. Another option is to do it later, on your computer. This usually works well if you are shooting in raw or if you have a program like Adobe's Lightroom or Apple's aperture. Lightroom and Aperture are pretty expensive, so it is usually cheeper to use google's free software Picasa, Apple's iPhoto, or something similar, but it isn't always as accurate or easy to do batches of photos. If you use lightroom or apple's aperture, the idea is that you don't worry about the white balance when you take the photo, then after your kid is done being cute, you pull out the target and take pictures of the target in the light that your kid was in when you were taking those cute pictures. Once you import your pictures later, you use the pictures with the target to set the white balance on all the other pictures. You can pick up the white balance in the photo with the target and apply it to all the other photos. Unfortunately, if you are using Picasa, Apple's iPhoto, or something similar, you have to find something white or 50% grey already in the picture you have captured. This is usually easy to do if your kids have white clothes, white in their eyes or white teeth. I hope this helps anybody who is struggling with color in their pictures. A fun thing to do is to use the wrong white balance preset sometimes and you get some interesting effects: Correct color balance: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/longimaging/3087931676/] Fluorescent color balance preset: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/longimaging/3087931240/in/photostream/] Hey Jessica,
Thanks for the shout out and the great compliments. I think it is wonderful what you are doing here on your blog. I know it can be hard sometimes because it seems like you aren’t getting feedback. I have this issue with Flickr, 100+ views and not a single comment. The only advice I can give is keep with it. A blog can be a lot like a radio program broadcasted in the middle of the night. Most of the time you are wondering if anybody is listening, but there is that moment when somebody can’t sleep (much like how I can’t sleep tonight) and they are affected in a good way based on what you say, or learn something they need to better their lives. I know it takes time to do these things, but there are many benefits that you probably won’t notice for years. If nothing else, you have an anthology of your photographic journey.
Lastly, the picture at the end is preceous. It looks like the “focus” is actually camera blur. One of the best moves I ever did was getting a 50mm prime lens with a 1.8 f stop. It gives you great depth of field, it’s inexpensive and it gives you a lot of leeway indoors without needing to use on camera flash. I got mine for $75 (crazy cheap for a lens) and it’s one of my go to lenses. Also, I’m trying to post that article here, but I’m not sure how. If you want to repost it, here is the article: Have you ever taken a picture and had whites turn blue or yellow? This is due to a setting called white balance. Depending on your camera, there are many different options. Most all of them come with the ability to use an auto white balance, several preset settings for typical situations and the seemingly scary and often under used custom white balance. The idea behind white balance is that white is interpreted differently based on the source of the light being reflected on the subject you are photographing. Even sunlight changes throughout the day. Colors at high noon look different from the same colors in the early morning or at sunset. Also, the same colors look different when you bring them inside under a fluorescent light or incandescent (tungsten) light. Now lets discuss the settings on your camera.
Auto white balance: A lot of people use this setting even though it often produces unpredictable results. What is happening is that your camera tries to identify something that is white or grey in the frame to use as a reference point for all the other colors there. You can get bad results if your camera picks something that is yellowish or bluish and thinks it is white. Also, if there is a "bright" color that is not white, your camera will often think that is white and throws all the other colors off. You may have experienced this if you are outside and take a picture of somebody in the shade with direct sunlight in the background. The good news is that there is a solution.
One solution is to use the presets on your camera to help your camera to guess more accurately what is true white. The presets are usually: direct sunlight, cloudy, tungsten, and flourescent. Some cameras also have a preset for shadow and direct sunlight together (the icon usually looks like a white house with lines coming off of it like a shadow), they also have a setting for something that is measured in Kelvin. The idea is that you get to be the computer and figure what light is reflecting off of your subject. Usually, if you are inside and in a room that receives most of it’s light from your traditional light bulb, you would use tungsten, if you are environmentally conscience and have compact fluorescent light bulbs, then you would pick fluorescent. If the room is being lit by a window, then you would use the cloudy setting. Though these presets aren’t completely accurate, they will get your colors more accurate more often than with auto white balance.
Now lets talk about custom white balance. The way this works is you take a picture of a grey or white card or a premade target like this one: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/longimaging/3087779358/] and you set it as the reference point for your whites. This works best if you are taking a portrait and you have the time to set it up in your camera. Now, considering my audience, kids usually don’t wait for you to whip out that camera, take a picture of a card and set the white balance. Another option is to do it later, on your computer. This usually works well if you are shooting in raw or if you have a program like Adobe’s Lightroom or Apple’s aperture. Lightroom and Aperture are pretty expensive, so it is usually cheeper to use google’s free software Picasa, Apple’s iPhoto, or something similar, but it isn’t always as accurate or easy to do batches of photos.
If you use lightroom or apple’s aperture, the idea is that you don’t worry about the white balance when you take the photo, then after your kid is done being cute, you pull out the target and take pictures of the target in the light that your kid was in when you were taking those cute pictures. Once you import your pictures later, you use the pictures with the target to set the white balance on all the other pictures. You can pick up the white balance in the photo with the target and apply it to all the other photos.
Unfortunately, if you are using Picasa, Apple’s iPhoto, or something similar, you have to find something white or 50% grey already in the picture you have captured. This is usually easy to do if your kids have white clothes, white in their eyes or white teeth.
I hope this helps anybody who is struggling with color in their pictures. A fun thing to do is to use the wrong white balance preset sometimes and you get some interesting effects:
Correct color balance:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/longimaging/3087931676/]
Fluorescent color balance preset:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/longimaging/3087931240/in/photostream/]

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