How to Use White Balance in Photography

How to Use White Balance in Photography
Advanced Action Sequence Photography Techniques in Low Light (Video)
Tricksy Photographer Pioneers Single Frame Timelapse Photography (Video)

Posted: 24 Oct 2013 04:38 PM PDT

Every digital camera has a White Balance or Automatic White Balance (AWB) setting in the camera menu. But how many of us actually use it or even know what it is for? Fortunately, most manufacturers have the Automatic White Balance pre-set in their cameras when they are shipped out. So most consumers are using it even if they are not aware of it.

Photo captured by Aleksey Yurchenko (Click Image to See More From Aleksey Yurchenko)

What is the purpose of White Balance?

Sometimes when we take a picture, the overall color tint of the image might be yellowish, blueish, or something in between. In any case, that overcast tint was not visible when the picture was taken and many times it can ruin a very good image.

The purpose of white balance is to eliminate the discoloration in an image due to certain colors in the scene having more intensity and/or a higher or lower “temperature”.

Thats right…colors in a scene have temperatures. Blue light has a high color temperature and red light has a low color temperature. Don’t look at these temperatures as hot or cold as in when we touch something. Rather, look at it as a measurement of the intensity of the light. The intensity of the light is measured by what is called the Kelvin scale. See the examples below.

Source of Light Color Temperature

Tungsten/Incandescent Light 2.500-3,000 K (Kelvin)
Clear Day (Mid day outside) 5,000-6,500 K
Shade or Heavily overcast day 9,000-10,000 K

These are very approximately values. As you can see, a tungsten light (regular light bulb) has a pretty cool color temperature. Its color temperature is closer to the red side of the color spectrum. If you take a picture with a lightbulb as the only light source, the image will have a slight orange /yellowish tint. (a red tint would be the extreme but the lightbulb temperature is not that cool). On the other hand a picture taken in the shade or on an overcast day might have a slightly bluish tint since the much higher temperature is closer to the other side of the color spectrum.

“Dressing bungalows Cape Town” captured by Andre Barnard (Click Image to See More From Andre Barnard)

What does temperature have to do with White Balance?

When the camera shutter is pressed,, the camera looks for something white in the scene to use as a point of reference. Even if the other colors in the scene are dominating the white, the balance function will try to adjust that white in the scene to the same degree of white that we see it with our eyes. The remaining colors in the scene are then adjusted proportionate to the white. The result should be a pretty neutral tone image with all colors showing as they should.

Automatic white balance works pretty good the majority of time. However, there might be times when it might still produce an image with coloring that is off. An example would be a scene that lacks any white color so there is no point of reference.

Most cameras have white balance setings that can be changed to fit a particular scene. Try using your camera’s built in settings such as fluorescent, cloudy, daylight, or whatever might fit the scene you are about to shoot. These settings may vary from camera to camera, but hopefully you will find a setting that will work for you.

Some cameras will allow you to manually pre set your white balance to suit your needs. Take a look at the tutorial on my website about White Balance for a tip on using a white sheet of paper or neutral gray card to pre-set your white balance.

“The Human People” captured by Amy (Click Image to See More From Amy)

In closing, lets say you just want to shoot without having to worry about white balance. If your camera allows you to take images in the raw mode, just use that mode. It is very likely you will have the wrong tint in some of the images, but you can adjust the color later using an image correction application like Photoshop.

So now you know what White Balance is all about.

About the Author:
Keith Jones writes for http://easybasicphotography.com. A site geared towards beginners through serious amateurs who want to learn a little more about basic digital photography.

For Further Training on Camera Settings:

There is a popular downloadable multimedia guide that teaches you how to take control over your camera, and get creative and confident with your photography. By combining illustrations, text, photos and video, it will help you get control in no time. Includes a bonus Field Guide—a printable pocket guide with some of the most essential information beautifully laid out inside.

It can be found here: Extremely Essential Camera Skills

Go to full article: How to Use White Balance in Photography

What are your thoughts on this article? Join the discussion on Facebook or Google+

Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

Advanced Action Sequence Photography Techniques in Low Light (Video)

Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:59 PM PDT

It’s one of the paradoxes of photography that the shots that most convey a sense of movement—the ones that seem to freeze a split second in time while still creating an aura of motion—are some of the most time consuming shots to set up and capture. Imagine, then, the amount of effort that went into photographer Max Riché‘s stitched up composite of trials biker Petr Kraus, performing his stunts on an urban rooftop. The finished product does more than capture Kraus working his two-wheeled magic; it depicts his evolution from amateur to professional, and evokes that famous Darwinian image of a hunched over ape gradually standing upright over several generations of natural selection:

Riché’s preparation for this shot was meticulous, and you can see that every element of the image was carefully thought out, starting with a storyboarded mock-up of what the finish product would look like. To show Kraus’s progression from unpolished street rider to elite champion athlete, Riché went through several steps:

First, he captured the image’s overall scene, by shooting a still-life of the rooftop and skyline in the background at dusk.
Next, Riché erected a neutral backdrop to capture Kraus’ riding without any background interference. The black velvet cloth won’t bounce any light back, and will make it easy to isolate Kraus and his bike in post production.
Riché’s plan was to use a slower shutter speed, to create a motion trail behind Kraus he does his stunts, and the black background facilitates isolating these trails of light, as well.
The lighting was also carefully planned out; a combination of continuous lighting with strobes help to create the ethereal effect of Kraus’s riding. The always-on lights help to create the blurred motion trails behind him, while firing the strobe at the end of a long shutter release freezes the action sharply.

action photography strobe light
action sequence photo

Each instance of Kraus in the final product was the result of dozens, if not hundreds, of total shots taken to get him at just the right time, in exactly the right position, to make the sequence work.
Using all the separately captured parts, Riché built the final image in post production, copying and stitching each individual shot of Kraus mid-ride in sequential order.

If it seems like a lot of work for one final shot, it is, though I’d argue it was worth it. As a commercial photographer, Riché can only benefit from his self-described perfectionism. And we can, too: seeing how he put this together should inspire some creative spins on the technique from those of us who enjoy experimenting with our cameras.

Go to full article: Advanced Action Sequence Photography Techniques in Low Light (Video)

What are your thoughts on this article? Join the discussion on Facebook or Google+

Article from: PictureCorrect Photography Tips

Tricksy Photographer Pioneers Single Frame Timelapse Photography (Video)

Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:01 AM PDT

When Pelle Cass was first called a "trick photographer," he balked at the label because it seemed to stretch too far away from his noble intentions to accentuate reality with his single frame timelapse photographs—to capture hundreds of those fleeting, lesser-photographed moments of mundane living and combine them all together into one off-kilter scene.

"I was kind of offended by the term,” Cass said, “but now I’ve come to embrace it. It does sum up some of the reasons some people like my pictures—because they're novel. There's a degree of fun and you get to search and it's a little bit like a puzzle, like a good trick."

It's all part of a project called "Selected People," wherein Cass selects which subjects should be included or discarded in each timelapse based on recurring trends and coincidences. In this video, Cass demonstrates his process to create a single frame timelapse of an urban intersection:

Though he provided The Creators Project with his "8 Commandments of Photography," Cass primarily governs his work according to the principle that Photoshop must only be used to increase imperfection and never to remove it.

"I have only one big rule, which is that I don't change anything," Cass said. "I always leave things in their original position."

And that's because, for Cass, everyday life is full of interesting subjects.

Instead of traveling to the ends of the earth, Cass finds beauty in the humdrum—in that moment when someone stumbles over a curb or waves to a friend, when a dog hikes a leg, or when twins suddenly emerge from a building and cross the street together.

"If you look down here, it's just like the most ordinary pedestrian thing in the world, but I find all kinds of interesting things happen even when you think it's just nothing," said Cass. "Nobody's going to go and spend hours looking at all these tiny little moments, and I can compress them and smush them together and compile them so people can look at them."