AG Photo luxury
White balance
Introduction
In this chapter I will mainly talk about colors and their rendering in a photograph. The important thing is learning how to take a picture and staying true to its colors. Afterwards, we will be able to use the technical command that we have acquired to distort the colors artistically.
In every digital camera we find white balance functions. We generally have the ability to choose different white balance presets, such as an automatic one for sunlight, another for nighttime and so on, depending on the model. These presets are often included in less expensive digital cameras, too.
In advanced reflex cameras, besides having automatic functions and predefined presets, we have the ability to choose the type of lighting of the scene through a variety of different lamps or by adjusting the warmth of the color as well as making manual calibration. The white balance function allows us to represent colors as faithfully as possible after we have evaluated our light conditions.
At this point, if we find ourselves outside in the sun (conditions that the digital camera is most often calibrated for), taking a photo will render the correct colors, and the photograph will faithfully resemble what we saw.
If instead we find ourselves in the dark and the light that illuminates our subject is, for example, a lamp, our discussion notably changes. It changes because the light emanating from the incandescent bulb is not the same as sunlight and lacks some of the wavelengths that sunlight has. It appears to us as being more yellow in color. When this light strikes objects, it alters the colors of them. If the walls of the room are white, they appear to us as being yellow the closer we are and this will also happen to other objects in the room. The white balance function makes references to the color white and is useful in order to calibrate the digital camera so that it returns the proper colors.
Colors and our perceptions of them
An important thing to know is that our brain is a powerful instrument that, at times, alters our reality so it can correct some visual errors. For example, if we live in a house with white walls, we become used to seeing them every moment of the day with light that changes depending on the time of day. Our brain knows that the walls are white and also in the evening, when we turn on the light that makes them more yellow, we still believe that we are seeing white walls. If someone asks us what color they are, we always respond: “White”. In reality, in that moment, they are yellow but our brain alters what it sees because it knows they are white, and it will show them to us as white. But when we take a photograph with the a neutral white balance (as if it were turned off), the walls appear yellow in the photo.
Our brain sees the photo and then sees the walls for what they are, yellow, and informs us that there is something different about them. The photo does not seem real to us. The photo has captured exactly what the camera saw, but we are not used to seeing the walls in that way because we think of them as being white. At this point, white balance comes into play and does what our brain normally does for us on its own. The white balance brings back the white (as well as all the other colors lost/distorted) with its base always being white light. Now the photo will seem more realistic even if it does not reproduce faithfully what we see. For example, you can see two photos in figures 01 and 02. We take the same photo of the Isola Tiberina in Rome with a swollen Tiber River and make use of different white balance settings. Are you able to understand which of the two is more faithful to reality before reading the captions below?
01 The photo shot with a manual control of the white balance on a digital camera before the shot was taken. My objective was to take the photo in such a way that it represented what my eyes were seeing in that moment. The colors, even though they do not appear real, are due to the type of illumination, color of the cloudy sky as well as the time of day (dusk).
02 This is the same photograph that we saw in figure 01, but it has been touched up using Photoshop in order to adjust the colors as we would expect them to be. Even though the photo is not a faithful reproduction of what we actually saw, it seems more realistic for a majority of viewers simply because, from our own experiences, a sky is blue (our tastes are subjective: I prefer the first image).
Introduction
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Equipment and accessories
Take a picture:
Buyer’s guide
Practice
If we find ourselves in the presence of light that is different from the sun or light from the sun at sunset or some other particular situation, we need to find an object that we know to be white in the composition. If we make a reference to that color, we have to adjust the camera so that in the photograph, that wall or that object is white. In this way, all the other colors will adjust themselves by the same “quantity” and go back to being “real” colors. If we do not feel up to the task or do not believe to have the ability, the best thing to do is to understand what kind of light we find ourselves in. If the lamp is an incandescent one (tungsten lamps with an internal filament) we will be able to regulate the white balance on “incandescence” and choose the type of incandescence based on the yellow component of the lamp. If the light is a neon tube or a florescent lamp, we would choose the corresponding setting. If instead we are more schooled in using our reflex camera and we know the temperature in Kelvin of the color generated by the lamp, the question will always be easier on reflex digital cameras, which allow us to alter the white balance based on the temperature of the color. In more advanced reflex digital cameras, we can calibrate the white balance manually with the aid of white cardboard (in reality we use a color that is closer to a light gray). After the cardboard is framed, we try to make the cardboard take on its real color in the photo. Once this has been done, we will proceed to the real shot. In this way, we will have a photo that has all real colors.
In figure 03, we can see how the white balance is wrong. It is enough to look at the marble columns of Rome’s most famous fountain. We know that they are white, but they appear with a tinge of red. In photo 04, instead, the adjustment is correct, and now the marble appears with the correct color. Also, all the other colors have moved towards their correct shade. All that you need to do is look at the building to the left or the color of the water.
03 Photo with an incorrect white balance.
04 Photo with a correct white balance.
However, as I mentioned, we do not always want to capture reality. At times, I can make a photo seem more suggestive by giving it a hint of yellow in natural light (by natural, we mean the light that is present in the photograph that we are taking). In this way, once understood from this chapter, we can use white balance “inappropriately” in order to obtain particular colors that give the photograph more interesting aspects. But here we enter into an aspect of photography that is very subjective and based on each of our own personal creativities. In this chapter, the goal for me was to explain this useful function.