Photography podcast #106 discusses the often confusing topic of white balance and why sometimes the camera screws up our images like giving us blue snow. Correcting this is really easy and it just requires a bit of understanding of what is going on in the background. In a very tight oversimplified nutshell, when we see something that has colour, it has that colour due to the colour temperature of the light source illuminating it.
Light a candle in a dark room and look at a white baseball; it will look orange. The same thing happens with white snow that looks bluish under cloudy overcast conditions because cloudy light is bluish. Our eyes might not notice the blue because our brain compensates for the cast because it “knows” that snow is white, but the camera often gets it wrong. In this podcast we talk about white balance, automatic white balance, the white balance presets that your camera comes with and setting a custom white balance. If you’ve ever wanted to improve the colour accuracy of your images, this photo podcast offers up some fast tips.
![Colors and color temperature in photography Colors and color temperature in photography](http://www.photography.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/photo-podcast-106-image-a.jpg)
Left image — When we see an object that has colour, it has that colour due to the color temperature of the light source illuminating it. This is why if we take a white baseball into a room lit only by a candle, the baseball looks orange. The same thing happens when we take a picture of white snow on a cloudy overcast day and it looks blue. Right image — White light (the kind we see at noon on a sunny cloudless day) is actually made up of equal parts of Red, Blue and Green light. These are the primary colours in photography.
![Blue snow in photography Blue snow in photography](http://www.photography.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/photo-podcast-106-image-1.jpg)
Left Image — The camera’s AWB (automatic white balance) didn’t render this scene properly and the snow looks bluish because the day was cloudy and cloudy light is bluish. Right Image — I corrected this in post processing and the snow looks more natural to the eye.
- If your image has a colour cast, to neutralize it, you add the OPPOSITE colour of the cast.
![Mixed lighting in photography Mixed lighting in photography](http://www.photography.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/photo-podcast-106-image-31.jpg)
This image was lit with 2 light sources; the light coming from the stove AND overcast light coming in through the windows. AWB does a very good job here but is a hint too warm. The cloudy preset adds yellow to compensate for cloudy light which is blue. In this case it reproduces too warm. The Incandescent preset adds blue to compensate for incandescent light which is warm. Here it added way too much blue. The custom setting, where you take a quick reading from a grey card or use a tool like an Expodisc was the most accurate and best reproduced the scene.
Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:
Spinrite - To recover crashed hard drives
Allan Levene is running for congress!
Grey cards at B&H — Expodisc at B&H — Color meters at B&H
Photography tours in Montreal — One to one photography instruction by yours truly
- Wide open aperture is our regular forum assignment for May
– Texture is our level 2 forum assignment for May
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