White Balance, The Basics of Digital Photography

  
Taking the Light's Temperature
 
Photography always comes back to the light and the color of the light that illuminates our subjects exerts a profound effect on the resulting image. Visible light can vary from the orange of candle flame to the deep blue of the evening sky, but he human eye has a remarkable ability to compensate for this wide spectrum. We can recognize a white card as being white through a broad color range, but our digital cameras lack our cognitive abilities to interpret visual input. Without correction, a white object captured in the yellow light of an incandescent bulb will be recorded with a yellow tint and the blue sky, illuminating someone in the shade of a building will change the face to a cold sickly blue. Digital cameras offer auto white balance settings (AWB) , using various algorithms to compensate for changes in the color of light, but, as is true of most automatic settings, the adjustments often don't produce the best results. This is one of those situations where the computer in your brain can work better that your camera's microprocessor, so its time to get to work.

Your Light Has a Temperature

Specturm of Light
http://www.exposureguide.com/white-balance.htm

Most digital cameras have white balance settings to adjust for a number of the common colors of illumination. These may work better than the Camera's auto white balance, but the balance is fixed and won't change with changing light. Fortunately a glance at the camera's LCD screen can provide quick feedback about the effect of any selection. The common presets include:

 
Sunlight:
Unfiltered sunlight contains the full spectrum of visible light and as a result tends to produce the most accurate white and color reproduction. This is a good setting when shooting outside in full sunlight, but who actually does that?

Cloudy and Shade:
In both of these situations the light tends to be cooler, as the full

Abigail in Full Shade

spectrum is filtered through blue clouds or comes into shaded areas from the even bluer sky. Cloudy and Shade settings compensate by warming the image. The Cloudy setting provides enough warming to balance the cooling effect that occurs when sunlight is scattered and filtered through the overcast. The Shade setting provides a warmer adjustment for times when the subject is illuminated by the more intense bright blue dome of the sky. It is important to be aware that, when shooting in the shade, areas outside of your main subject that are in the bright sunlight may take on an unnatural orange tint.

Tungsten:
Indoor illumination from Tungsten light bulbs has a strong yellow

Tungsten Color Balance

hue and the Tungsten setting is used to cool down the digital image by adding blue. A good way to appreciate this effect is to shoot outside in sunlight with the Tungsten WB setting. This will reinforce the importance of readjusting the white balance when you going from inside to outdoors. Last

Kissing Bridge Tungsten WB

week I used the tungsten setting while shooting inside the Vermont Country Store. When I ventured outside, I forgot to readjust the WB and the first couple images of the "Kissing Bridge" had an intensely blue tint. This blue shift is also seen when windows to the outside are included in my indoor photography. Situations like this, when there is a mosaic of different colored light, can be challenging and is where local adjustments of color balance in Photoshop can be a life-saver.

 
Fluorescent:
Fluorescent lighting has a blue/green shade which is warmed using the Fluorescent setting. The color of fluorescent can vary a good deal and it can take experimentation to find the best WB setting.

Flash WB

Flash:
The light from most flash units tends to most closely approximate sunlight, but can be a bit cool. The flash setting usually tends to slightly warm the image.

 






Custom White Balance:
The fixed white balance adjustments can provide a good approximation of the correct setting for specific lighting, but they are often imperfect. Some cameras allow fine tuning of the color compensation, but the use of Custom White Balance can be the easiest way to nail the precise adjustment. This option is available on many digital cameras.

Incandescent Light
and Tungsten White Balance

Custom White Balance starts with taking a picture of a white or neutral gray card in the same light that is falling on your subject. These cards are available on-line or at your local camera store (remember those?). A clean white piece of paper or anything else which is pure white can serve. I have a card with white on one side and gray on the other. The details vary, but on my Canon 5D II, I display the picture of my white card,

Custom White Balance

which has been exposed in the correct light and positioned in the center of the frame. Then I select "Custom White Balance" from
my camera's menu. I tell the camera to use the current image as the basis for custom white balance and then, any time I select "Custom" for the white balance option, the white balance will return to this setting. Custom white balance is helpful whenever precise control of color is necessary, such as in product photography. Your client will not appreciate getting the color wrong on the Campbell Soup can. 



 


 

Shoot RAW! 
All of this fuss about white balance is especially important if you are shooting in JPEG rather than RAW. Need I say that this is just one more reason that you should shoot in RAW? In-camera white balance settings are of little importance when shooting RAW since all of the color information is preserved in the RAW image. Regardless of the original setting, the white balance can be adjusted in post-processing without any loss of quality. Unfortunately, when shooting in JPEG, white balance is baked into the image file with the loss of a significant amount of color data.






 
 To demonstrate this, I intentionally shot Chesterfield's historic town hall with the white balance incorrectly set to tungsten. I captured the image in both RAW and in the highest quality JPEG and then tried to salvage the images to accurately reflect the overcast lighting. There was no problem readjusting the RAW color balance, but, despite doing everything I could in Lightroom and Photoshop the JPEG image's color remained disappointingly flat and dull. 




As can be seen, post-processing color balance adjustments on JPEG files are difficult and result in a poor quality image. If for some totally unfathomable reason you are still shooting in JPEG, there are two things to remember.

• First, don't.   
• Secondly, if you do, careful adjustment of white balance in the camera is essential. You really won't get a second chance.

So, when shooting RAW is there any reason to set a specific white balance? I generally keep my camera on Auto White Balance. In most situations this works well as a starting point and then I almost always tweak the color in post. In a few situations such as portraiture or product photography strict color accuracy is important, but for most of my work, precise color matching is not necessary or even desirable. When I am shooting in the golden evening light the last thing I want is for whites to appear pure white. If I used custom white balance from a white card, I would loose all the warmth of the scene. Occasionally I will use the cloudy or shade settings to more accurately reflect the warmth of the "Golden Hours", although when shooting in RAW I can make the same adjustment in post. In post processing I am looking for the colors that best reflect the appearance and feel of the moment. 

 


A Fixed White Balance
There are occasional instances when setting a specific fixed white balance can be helpful. Last week I had a great time shooting in the

Country Store Light

Vermont Country Store. The lighting came uniformly from incandescent bulbs and, by setting the camera to Tungsten White Balance, all of the images had a consistent white balance adjustment. The color wasn't precisely what I wanted, it was still a bit yellow for my taste, but, because all of the images started with the same color balance, I was able to batch all of the images together and make a single adjust which worked pretty well for all of them. Because in AWB the white balance changes from image to image, a single adjustment would not have worked as well for all of the images. Shooting in Tungsten WB ended up saving time that would have been spent performing subtle tweaks to many of the images.



Of course Photoshop and Lightroom have powerful tools to adjust

Cloudy WB

white balance in the digital darkroom, but that should be a topic for a future blog. For now it is important to understand how the camera sees color balance differently from our remarkable eyes and how color balance settings help to compensate for this difference. This is the time to settle back with your manual (if you can find it) and learn about how your camera adjusts white balance. Keep your eye on that LCD screen and experiment your brains out. Getting color balance right is especially important when shooting JPEG, but whether recording JPEG or RAW files it all comes down to Getting Color Balance Right in the Digital Camera.

Jeff Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com

The Vermont Country Store

The Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find

 

Last Sunday, when Susan perfunctorily asked if I wanted to come with her to the Vermont Country Store, I knew that she expected me to run away. A shopping trip? And with the Patriots playing the despised New York Jets? She was more than a little surprised when I enthusiastically said yes. I hadn't visited this uniquely New England store in a few years and I knew that in addition to being "The Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find", it would also be a colorful treasure trove of photographic opportunities. And of course a topic for a blog article.


The Vermont Country Store opened in 1946 when long time Vermonters Vrest and Mildred Ellen Orton supplemented their Christmas Card list with a small, hand-printed catalogue of "36 Items You Can Buy Now". Since that most modest of starts, the company has grown to become a New England tradition, with stores in Weston and Rockingham Vermont, and it is still run by the Orton family. The original 1946 store in Weston is the first restored general store in the country, and the same informal appearance of the bare post and beam construction and well worn wood floors is maintained in the Rockingham establishment, which was opened in 1967. A trip to either one of the stores is a reminder of the time when the local country store could be depended upon to have a little of everything. Both stores are packed with items you will remember from your youth, and thought were long gone, as well as things you couldn't imagine existed, but now seem absolutely essential. All of this is presented in an atmosphere of relaxed and friendly clutter that seems less like a store, and more like an exploration of treasures in a long neglected attic.

The Rockingham Store was, as I remembered, filled with practical New England clothing, including gloves, sweaters and scarves. I know I will find a plaid flannel vest under the tree and Jeremy will get a pare of gloves with finger pads compatible with his iPhone, not everything is an antique. Around one corner I found an eclectic collection of kitchen utensils and elsewhere shelves of children's books and classic toys. And of course there is the food. In addition to a wide variety of local cheeses, crackers, jams and sauces, there is a sea of jars containing all the penny candy that you recall from your childhood. I could go on, and on, but more importantly all this riot of color, pattern and novelty creates a wonderful playground for the photographer





Deane is in Charge

A Photographic Exploration
My first job upon entering the store was to find a friendly appearing clerk to ask permission to shoot in the store. Easy, everyone is friendly and there was no problem with photography. I didn't expect any difficulty, but asking gave me the chance to meet the manager and learn more about the store's history. Of course it also allowed me drop off one of my calendars. Maybe next year?






Challenges
Photography in the store offered some special challenges. First, the general illumination was spotty and often rather dim. Of course the soft light is an important part of the store's charm and I didn't want to disturb customers with flash or a clumsy tripod, so a fast lens and high ISO was required. Given the close quarters, my f2.8 16-35 mm seemed the perfect choice. The other major challenge was avoiding knocking over the precariously displayed merchandise with my camera bag. Somehow I managed. Since I always shoot in RAW, I tend not to worry about color balance and leave the camera on Auto White Balance, but in the store the lighting was consistently tungsten and going with the tungsten setting made the color adjustment easier in the editing process. More on this next week.


Establishing Shots
To tell any story you need the broad establishing shots that set the scene. Too often I get so excited about jumping into the fascinating detail that I forget these mundane, but necessary, views and, as a result, my story can lack a sense of place. At the Country Store the outside shots were easy even though the day was overcast. Inside, the broad shots were hampered by those pesky humans who seem always to be in motion. I did the best I could and then rationalized that the blur provided a sense of energy.

Composing a Store
My experience is primarily with landscape photography and I tend to bring the same sense of landscape composition to all subjects whether it is macro, portraiture, events or, in this case, a store. The basic "rules" of composition tend to work in all of these situations and thinking of the "landscape" of shelves, isles and displays is the inescapable construct of my vision. I can't believe that I wrote "construct of my vision", but you get the idea. So let's look around.



Power of the Foreground
With so much stuff in all directions, it is easy to lose the detail amongst all the clutter. I tried to focus on the detail in the foreground while keeping the sense of expansive complexity in a progressively softening background. The feeling of depth works well to communicate the size of the store.









Diagonals to Draw the Eye
I hate straight horizontal and vertical lines and I always look for strong diagonals to draw the eye and add energy to a composition. In the store the diagonals were everywhere. Rows of shelves, tables of candy and clothing and long aisles. With the wide apertures required by the dim light, I often needed to use focus stacking to capture enough depth of field.

 
 

Zoom in on the Detail
So much of the fascination of the Vermont Country Store comes from studying the detail in the endless array of antique and classic items on display. I didn't have my macro lens on hand but I found that the close focusing capability of my fast wide angle worked quite well.  On my next trip, I will carry my Macro and explore a whole new layer of interest.










Nancy's Fudge

The People Are the Store
For a great store you need great people and I found everyone at the country store to be friendly, energetic and more than a little playful. And this all on one of the busiest and hectic days of the year. I appreciated everyone's help and interest.










The Grounds
The Rockingham Store is set on 86 acres of Vermont country-side which includes a covered bridge, an old Grist Mill, the Water Wheel Museum and a Christmas Tree Farm out back.

The 1872 covered bridge was originally built in West Townsend Vermont, but, when the span became threatened by the rising waters of the Townsend Dam, it was disassembled and in 1967 the renovated bridge was moved to Its current location. It was originally named the Depot Bridge, but, in its new location, it was known as the Victorian Village Bridge and now the "Kissing Bridge". New England tradition claims that bridges were covered to protect lovers from being observed on their amorous strolls across the water. The roofs probably had more to do with protecting the structures from the brutal New England weather, but I prefer the more romantic explanation.





We had a great visit to the Vermont Country Store. In addition to the photography, I managed to stuff too many samples of cheese, jams and sweets down my throat and I snuck a "Vermont 1791" mug into Susan's shopping bag. Beginning in 1777 Vermont was an independent republic and only joined the original 13 in 1791 as the 14th state.

Whether you come to Weston or Rockingham, the Vermont Country Store is a great place to visit as you explore and photograph the beauty of rural Central Vermont.

The Vermont Country Store web site

For more images check out my
Vermont Country Store Gallery


Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com

 

 

A Hancock Album

Hancock Village Mural, Hancock Inn

This week It is my turn to post an article on the New England Photography Guild Blog. This honor predictably rotates among the members, but I always fall into a panic when I suddenly realize that I must come up with two blogs for the week. Even after over 200 articles on my Getting it Right in the Digital Camera Blog, it is still a challenge to come up with just one topic every week. And now I need TWO! My usual approach is to try to find a single topic that can be dealt with in two different ways. This usually means picking a special location in New England, discussing its beautiful qualities in the New England Photographers a Guild Blog and then adding a supplemental album of pictures from the area in my Getting it Right in the digital Camera a Blog. These are photography blogs and I always like to make the articles about the images.  It is great to feel less constrained in the selection of the images.

Hancock NH, A New England Time Machine (NEPG Blog)

This week my twofer is about beautiful and historic Hancock New Hampshire. Hancock is located just north of Peterborough in the southern tier of New Hampshire. Although a bit out of the way, it is a active community with a busy village center, almost entirely populated with historic buildings, and with soft rolling countryside marked by lovely lakes, hills and tens of thousands of acres of conservation land. It is all very typical of our corner of New England.

Hancock was first settled in 1764 and was incorporated as a town separate from Peterborough in 1779. The town is filled with fascinating history, but I covered much of this in my NEPG Blog. So lets get to the pictures, starting with more of Hancock's quintessentially New England village center.

Town Meeting House / Congregational Church
The meeting house dates back to 1820 and features an original Paul Revere Bell from 1825:

Listen to the Ringing of the Paul Revere Bell in the Hancock Meeting House


The Hancock Inn
Since 1779 the Hancock Inn has provided New England warmth and hospitality to countless travelers and local residents. That tradition continues to this day.








 













 

Fiddleheads Cafe
Fiddleheads is a great place for a snack and especially nice place to view the work of local artists. Did I mention that I will be showing my New England photography at the Cafe from December 22 and continuing until January 19th, 2015. Just one more reason to visit:



 








Historic Village
Nearly all the structures in Hancock's village center are listed on the National Registry of Historic Places:


 



The Countryside in All Seasons










 







 



















Harris Center

Struggles Along the Trail

Though its school programs, research and land preservation efforts, The Harris Center is dedicated to environmental awareness and protection. It is also a great starting point to explore the center's extensive trail hiking system.

  






The National Radio Astronomy Observatory. 
What? Yes Hancock's nearly 10 story tall radio telescope is part of the "Very Long Baseline Array". The VLBA includes 10 radio telescope dishes stretching 5000 miles from Hawaii to the Caribbean and is the largest continuously operating astronomical instrument in the world. In Hancock and you can drive drive right up!

 




 
Whether strolling its historic Main Street or wandering its rural back roads,  Hancock is a great place for New England photography.  I'll see you out there.


Links
Hancock Photo Album

Hancock NH, A New England Time Machine (NEPG Blog)

The Hancock Inn

Fiddleheads Cafe and Catering
The Harris Center  

The Very Long Baseline Array National Radio Astronomy Observatory


Jeffrey Newcomer
Partridgebrookreflections.com