Playing with White Balance

[janestarz]

After my shopping spree and a very happy SMS message from Jeroen about the fabrics I obtained, I realised as I was clearing away the fabrics I'd laid out for him that it's been a while since my last dressdiary. Why not make a dress diary of the coat? It would document the process and give the good folks over at dressdiaries something to read.

I was rather impressed with the fabric and colour choices, but they turned out to be a bit hard to put into pixels. The dark chocolate cotton-linen blend and vivid cobalt did not agree with any pre-programmed white balance. Especially on a sunny day in a south-facing apartment with the blinds half-open.

My dear Canon (who still needs to be named), had some trouble getting the white balance right. I tried several pre-programmed settings on it (both sunny and indoors) but neither captured the colours as I wanted them. My fabrics aren't mocca and sky, they're bloody dark chocolate and cobalt, yes?

I finally found the button I needed. I'm not completely content with the dark brown shade yet (it's a bit too dark) but the blue is very lifelike. See the difference:



I haven't completely nailed the right setting yet, but at least I know which button it is. The coat itself will be a challenge too! (Long live north-facing ateliers!)
Expect dress diary entries to appear in this space soon.

Comments

[aroka.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the biggest problem of color photography: getting the right colors. :)

You can usually set a custom white balance based on a single photo of a white object, though it is better to have a "perfect" grey card with you. That should at least take the available light into account. (though: watch out if you're mixing different types of light sources, such as incandescent lights with tungsten TL's or even sunlight - there's no white balance to fix that, it'll just end up horrible). So, also check what kind of light you have and turn stuff off if it's a different type.

Besides this, achieving a correct white balance (or correct color settings in general) can be quite difficult. Ideally, you also need to measure your monitor color profile and color correct for that (regularly), and if you want to go for prints you'll also need to set up the correct color profile for your printer. Furthermore, just to make all this slightly more annoying, even then the images you'll see on your screen are usually not how other people will see them on their computers and laptops, because they usually aren't color corrected, or, even worse: set up for VIVID BRIGHTY BRILIANT COLORZ FOR MOVIES AND GAMES.. :)

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

I agree it's quite a challenge. I also love my Linux/KDE as it can easily correct my monitors output. What kicks me in the rear more regularly is the bright backlight of the camera's LCD (I swear it wasn't that dark on there!).

In any case, the difference between left and right in this picture is dramatic enough as it is.

As for the tips: thank you! What I used to do with my point and shoot was to just turn everything on in the atelier, point it, and hope it would overcome the tiny sensor's blindness. I'm very curious how my Canon will handle north-facing atelier (yay, no direct sun except very early in the morning!).

[aroka.livejournal.com]

You're welcome!

If you're unsure of the exposure of an image, learn to read the histogram in the camera. That can be quite valuable in seeing whether an image is too bright or too dark.