Posted by John Robinson on March 18, 2010 at 7:10 PM
There has been a lot on here lately re this topic and i think its good as others apart from me do have problems occasionally.
However I would like to relate a story.
I do quite a lot of art - watercolour pencil etc etc. Some years back I worked with Bruce Pearson ( a superb artist in my humble opinion ) and he said "If you have a problem - give me a ring "
I thought Yeah- they all say that. Anyway- I was at the time doing a watercolour of snowdrops. I couldn't get the whites right- so I rang him up.
He was on the phone for at least half an hour.
Briefly he explained, that there is no such thing as a proper white. Every white has a hint of something nearby.
With the snowdrops it was a minute hint of green !
Does that say anything ??
Cheers
JohnR
Exactly - That is why when we first started discussing this in your original Raven shot I only suggested trying to set the black point of the histogram - it stretches the grey/ mid tones slightly and helps adjust any "perceived" camera white balance isues but leaves the white point RGB values alone maintaining any natural colour cast in the whites. - Black of the eye and deep shadows are eliminating light so should be a trues black not influenced by the prevailing light conditions
I now only optimise the black point, we are nature photographers, not studio photographers who use a set of colour temperature balanced lights
Posted by eric weight on March 19, 2010 at 5:27 AM
Colour is such a subjective issue John. As you know from personal experience, no two people are actually seeing the same colour even when they are standing next to each other looking at the same picture. Spare a thought for the poor car sprayers amongst us who back in the seventies had to cope with repairing fords that came in about twenty different shades of white that were all called diamond white! Some gonzo at the paint factory tips a bit much blue pigment in and bingo - shade number twenty one went onto the next thousand ford transits.
To make it worse, in digital imaging we can now have any colour we want, when we want it and in fact there are people called colourists, whose job it is to introduce colour cast to film and pictures that enhance the atmosphere of the shot. So a happy scene might be deliberately made brighter and more yellow while the next death scene may be made dark and grey or even green if they want to create a spooky feel. It is where photography becomes more creative with the use of all the different possibilities available to it these days, but not technology that we make enough use of in the field of wildlife photography in my opinion.
I have got to go now, your post has given me a lot of ideas and I have to go play with photoshop! eric
The colour balance and the warmth of an image will always be a personal choice during the raw conversion stage, but it's important to be able to recognize and correct a gross inaccuracy IMHO.
Taking the original Raven image as an example, that wasn't a reflection off of the surrounding grass or a slight colour balance issue, it was a completely innaccurate setting somewhere along the line.
Perhaps the colour of the subject matter and/or surroundings fooled your camera, although you'd normally expect to correct such an inaccuracy at the raw conversion stage. Of course, as already mentioned in the other thread, this is perhaps a bit of a nightmare if you don't have perfect colour vision.
It's certainly not unusual to have your camera in Auto White Balance and have it record a scene with a completely different colour temperature and hue, despite an identical scene, in identical light and shot just a second or two apart.
Discussion
3 repliesHowever I would like to relate a story.
I do quite a lot of art - watercolour pencil etc etc. Some years back I worked with Bruce Pearson ( a superb artist in my humble opinion ) and he said "If you have a problem - give me a ring "
I thought Yeah- they all say that. Anyway- I was at the time doing a watercolour of snowdrops. I couldn't get the whites right- so I rang him up.
He was on the phone for at least half an hour.
Briefly he explained, that there is no such thing as a proper white. Every white has a hint of something nearby.
With the snowdrops it was a minute hint of green !
Does that say anything ??
Cheers
JohnR
I now only optimise the black point, we are nature photographers, not studio photographers who use a set of colour temperature balanced lights
To make it worse, in digital imaging we can now have any colour we want, when we want it and in fact there are people called colourists, whose job it is to introduce colour cast to film and pictures that enhance the atmosphere of the shot. So a happy scene might be deliberately made brighter and more yellow while the next death scene may be made dark and grey or even green if they want to create a spooky feel. It is where photography becomes more creative with the use of all the different possibilities available to it these days, but not technology that we make enough use of in the field of wildlife photography in my opinion.
I have got to go now, your post has given me a lot of ideas and I have to go play with photoshop!
Taking the original Raven image as an example, that wasn't a reflection off of the surrounding grass or a slight colour balance issue, it was a completely innaccurate setting somewhere along the line.
Perhaps the colour of the subject matter and/or surroundings fooled your camera, although you'd normally expect to correct such an inaccuracy at the raw conversion stage. Of course, as already mentioned in the other thread, this is perhaps a bit of a nightmare if you don't have perfect colour vision.
It's certainly not unusual to have your camera in Auto White Balance and have it record a scene with a completely different colour temperature and hue, despite an identical scene, in identical light and shot just a second or two apart.