couldn't get the right turquoise!!

Hey all,

I'm new to photography and try to learn as much as I can from the great people on this forum. So, i was going to lake louise, alberta. Obviously, I was going to click away when I got there. I had picked up the 10-22 for this occasion. The day was overcast, and some shots turned out not so bad. But for the life of me I couldn't get the turquoise to come out of the water. I tried so many different types of metering(spot, center averaged), tried playing with the exposure compensation. The thing I don't understand, is when my wife and I were in the picture, the colour actually looked pretty close(my opinion). I know i can fix some of this in post processing, but I'm dying to know what was happening. If someone could explain to what is happening here I would be much appreciated.

Also, what strategies does one use when shooting landscapes on overcast days, I assume you gotta make a choice of what you want to expose.

Thanks all,

sabir

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I see you're shooting with an XSI.

First let's get over the turquoise: did you try changing your white balance? Also, if you shot in raw, you can change the aqua colors' hue, luma and saturation to get the desired result pretty easily in postprocessing... don't know if you could have pulled it much better by playing with exposure. Generally about overcast - and generally when you're taking pictures, auto white balance (which the exif says you used) sucks, the camera will really rarely get it right.

About the blown out sky: This photo has a big dynamic range. What this means is - you could either get the water and land exposed ok and the sky blown out or the sky exposed ok and the water too dark... what could have been done?

1) hdr - if you took 2 or 3 photos where each part was properly exposed and merged them, everything would have came out awesome.
2) if you shot in raw - playing with the curve a bit (recovery, reducing highlights etc)
3) maybe a gradation filter (darker on top, normal at the bottom), so the sky would have came out as it is reflected in the water in #2 - being able to see clouds and stuff...

dunno, i know i came firing on all guns, im not sure if i explained my thoughts correctly, but Ill check back in if you have some questions

best regards!

Hey there,

I am using an Xsi, my first dslr and am jumping over to point and click, god are things expensive and bulky(vacations are really never the same )

Thanks for your quick reply. I actually didn't know the white balance played that much of role in colour rendering. I did shoot in raw, however I am really curious how to get it right from the camera side.

Okay, I will cut out the auto white balance, should I use the pre-made settings(cloudy, sunny). Or use the custom white balance, what should decide when you use custom white blance.

1)HDR- that's interesting, I've been seeing more and more about this. Are people starting to use this more often?? When I was getting into photographymy initial thoughts were I am going to keep whatever the camera sees and make sure to learn how to make the camera sees it correctly. I am starting to realize photos are an interpretation of reality. The blown out sky and dark blue are not what I saw. So, I am starting to see how some of these other tools can bring your picture closer to what your interpretation is. But we don't consider these photographs afterwards do we? The tutorial I read about HDR was talking about using AEB and using different exposure to bring balance to certain scene by layers the shots.

In this case I would choose different parts of the scene to expose correct and use software to layer them together?

What makes a good candidate for HDR? High contrast? Are a lot of people doing HDR nowadays?

2) I did shoot in raw, but really wanted to know, why was the colour right when we were in the picture and not when we were out. I will try and fix that pp. What would be the best course of attack.


3)Okay, I will look at your filter advice. I don't know too much about them...there seems to be a quite a bit out there. So, some more reading to do.

Thanks a lot for your time and advice!

sabir

eror11 wrote in post #6562479
I see you're shooting with an XSI.

First let's get over the turquoise: did you try changing your white balance? Also, if you shot in raw, you can change the aqua colors' hue, luma and saturation to get the desired result pretty easily in postprocessing... don't know if you could have pulled it much better by playing with exposure. Generally about overcast - and generally when you're taking pictures, auto white balance (which the exif says you used) sucks, the camera will really rarely get it right.

About the blown out sky: This photo has a big dynamic range. What this means is - you could either get the water and land exposed ok and the sky blown out or the sky exposed ok and the water too dark... what could have been done?

1) hdr - if you took 2 or 3 photos where each part was properly exposed and merged them, everything would have came out awesome.
2) if you shot in raw - playing with the curve a bit (recovery, reducing highlights etc)
3) maybe a gradation filter (darker on top, normal at the bottom), so the sky would have came out as it is reflected in the water in #2 - being able to see clouds and stuff...

dunno, i know i came firing on all guns, im not sure if i explained my thoughts correctly, but Ill check back in if you have some questions

best regards!

eror11 wrote in post #6562479
....First let's get over the turquoise: did you try changing your white balance? Also, if you shot in raw, you can change the aqua colors' hue, luma and saturation to get the desired result pretty easily in postprocessing... don't know if you could have pulled it much better by playing with exposure. Generally about overcast - and generally when you're taking pictures, auto white balance (which the exif says you used) sucks, the camera will really rarely get it right.

This is essentially what I was thinking about the problem.

For the OP, an important thing to remember is that the camera doesn't recognize color in the same way that our eyes do. The color of daylight changes dramatically during the day or depending on cloudiness or shade. Our eyes, on the other hand compensate for the changing color of light by adjusting our perception so that certain things which we identify as being a certain color will still appear correctly. On a camera, the AWB mode tries to emulate that to some extent by attempting to make the brightest part of an image neutral as long as it is not overexposed. That algorithm works reasonably well as long as it is a normal sunny day and in other circumstances, it is easily confused.

I also agree about the fix for the problem -- adjust the color temperature and bias color. One explanation for why the color looked correct in the picture in which you and your wife appear might be because she s wearing a white jacket and your camera was set to AWB.

Hey Bill,
Thanks for the explanation about white balance. That's makes perfect sense with the jacket...I would have never thought that!! I was going crazy trying to understand what the difference was...

should I never use awb? Or use the pre-set white balance settings

I will try to fix in pp. Thanks again for the explanation.

bill boehme wrote in post #6564359
This is essentially what I was thinking about the problem.

For the OP, an important thing to remember is that the camera doesn't recognize color in the same way that our eyes do. The color of daylight changes dramatically during the day or depending on cloudiness or shade. Our eyes, on the other hand compensate for the changing color of light by adjusting our perception so that certain things which we identify as being a certain color will still appear correctly. On a camera, the AWB mode tries to emulate that to some extent by attempting to make the brightest part of an image neutral as long as it is not overexposed. That algorithm works reasonably well as long as it is a normal sunny day and in other circumstances, it is easily confused.

I also agree about the fix for the problem -- adjust the color temperature and bias color. One explanation for why the color looked correct in the picture in which you and your wide appear might be because she s wearing a white jacket and your camera was set to AWB.

pashas wrote in post #6563016
Hey there,

I am using an Xsi, my first dslr and am jumping over to point and click, god are things expensive and bulky(vacations are really never the same )

Thanks for your quick reply. I actually didn't know the white balance played that much of role in colour rendering. I did shoot in raw, however I am really curious how to get it right from the camera side.

Okay, I will cut out the auto white balance, should I use the pre-made settings(cloudy, sunny). Or use the custom white balance, what should decide when you use custom white blance.

1)HDR- that's interesting, I've been seeing more and more about this. Are people starting to use this more often?? When I was getting into photographymy initial thoughts were I am going to keep whatever the camera sees and make sure to learn how to make the camera sees it correctly. I am starting to realize photos are an interpretation of reality. The blown out sky and dark blue are not what I saw. So, I am starting to see how some of these other tools can bring your picture closer to what your interpretation is. But we don't consider these photographs afterwards do we? The tutorial I read about HDR was talking about using AEB and using different exposure to bring balance to certain scene by layers the shots.

In this case I would choose different parts of the scene to expose correct and use software to layer them together?

What makes a good candidate for HDR? High contrast? Are a lot of people doing HDR nowadays?

2) I did shoot in raw, but really wanted to know, why was the colour right when we were in the picture and not when we were out. I will try and fix that pp. What would be the best course of attack.


3)Okay, I will look at your filter advice. I don't know too much about them...there seems to be a quite a bit out there. So, some more reading to do.

Thanks a lot for your time and advice!

sabir

HDR - you make 2, 3 or more photos of a scene. You have the AEB function in your menu. You set it for starters to +-1 (youll get the feel for it afterwards). Its great that you seem to be shooting from a tripod so basically, as long as nothing in the photo is moving too much, you'll get a good hdr photo. What are good candidates? Landscapes primarilly, stuff with diferrent colors and lots of shades of a color... places where the dynamic range of the lighting in the scene is very very high - meaning places where you have both a very dark shade and a very light part of the scene (like the sky). After that, yes, you stitch it in photoshop or something else made for HDR... thats probably the trickiest part, I didnt make a really good HDR as of yet, even though i tried about 4-5 times so far. It always looks kinda bleak when i do it, but i did see some awesome ones. You can see them on this forum.

2. the preset ones will be much better then awb... ideally, you can always carry a grey card which should be a really cheap or free piece of equipment. Then you put the card in the light you want to shoot at and tell your camera - "ok, camera, this is what i want to be white/grey, you do what you need to do so it isn't pink, blue, or whatever else"... thats the best way to go when you do have enough time to set it all up...

3. Some people like them, some don't... My friend has a pretty big one and believe you me, it attracts lots of attention... so if thats a problem, consider it!

pashas wrote in post #6566085
Hey Bill,
Thanks for the explanation about white balance. That's makes perfect sense with the jacket...I would have never thought that!! I was going crazy trying to understand what the difference was...

should I never use awb? Or use the pre-set white balance settings

I will try to fix in pp. Thanks again for the explanation.

If you shoot in RAW, it does not really matter what you set for the in-camera white balance because it does not affect the recorded image. With a RAW image, the white balance is just part of the meta data which is information about the camera and shooting conditions that is embedded in the header of the image file. It is only when the image gets converted into a format such as JPG or TIFF that the changes actually modify the values of image pixels. It is a different story for in-camera generated JPG images because the camera takes the RAW capture data and applies the settings such as white balance to modify pixel values.

Concerning AWB, I use it most of the time when shooting outdoors under good lighting. I carry a small white balance card that I will sometimes shoot under the same lighting as my other shots to allow me to get a check on what to do with the white balance during post processing -- although, at times I will modify that setting if I feel the actual color of the light will be more effective for the mood of the image. For instance, a shot late in the day might look better showing the bias towards yellow and magenta rather than being neutral like a mid day shot would be.

For indoor photography, it is best to use a white balance card and either correct during post processing or in-camera because indoor lighting can be all over the map from almost orange to green and other strange colors resulting from mixed lighting.

Actually, I did not realize that about the raw format and white balance.

I will try and fix in PP. Out of curiousity, do people do PP on most of their shots, because even in this short trip I have lots of photos. I suppose lots is a subjective matter.

Thanks a lot to eror11 and bill for illuminating(ha it's a white balance joke) the subject for me.

sabir

i usually invest some time in pping about a select 10-20% of my images. Only the best ones or the ones I consider a challenge or for practice... I shot about 10,000 images in around 9 months i own an slr... so there you go. All the images I ever want to show, print or think I can use them in the future, I pp... the rest I archive (unless they're totally blurry or lame, then -> recycle bin for space conservation) more like snapshots - to remember stuff, what I shot, people etc... ofc, I can still pp those images later on if it turns out I want to show them or do something with them...

pashas wrote in post #6570899
Actually, I did not realize that about the raw format and white balance.

I will try and fix in PP. Out of curiousity, do people do PP on most of their shots, because even in this short trip I have lots of photos. I suppose lots is a subjective matter.

Thanks a lot to eror11 and bill for illuminating(ha it's a white balance joke) the subject for me.

sabir

I am still PPing some shots from a vacation a year ago in which I took somewhere around a thousand images.

I hope my comments are not off-color (one bad pun deserves another).

LOL i love bad puns.....thanks for the help Bill!

Okay, I just wanted to get a feel for how much time people put into PP.

This is conversation has got me blue(wrong shade though) That'll be my last bad pun promise.

bill boehme wrote in post #6573367
I am still PPing some shots from a vacation a year ago in which I took somewhere around a thousand images.

I hope my comments are not off-color (one bad pun deserves another).