One of the biggest advantages of shooting “digital” instead of film is that you can work under all kinds of weird lighting conditions and capture accurate color without resorting to camera filters. For many digicam owners, the temptation is to set the camera on Auto White Balance and blast away. “I’ll fix it later in Photoshop,” people will tell me. “Why waste time, when you can capture it correctly in the first place?” I usually answer them.
Many digital cameras offer different White Balance options: On the Canon EOS D-60 that I use for most of my digital photography, settings include: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Flash, and Custom; similar choices are found on most digital SLRs. Here are some the differences between working under each of these settings along with some suggestions on how to use them for completely different reasons.
Auto white balance: set it and forget it?
Auto white balance works…sometimes. It’s especially useful in venues with wildly different kinds of light sources, such as convention centers or athletic arenas, but always do a few test shots first to see if the color is close. Under most low-light conditions, I find it’s necessary to increase exposure compensation to produce an image that’s bright enough. Since this is digital, you can see the results right away on your Preview Screen. Make sure you check the histogram, which will indicate if the entire tonal range is covered.
AWB fixes unconventional light: This unretouched digital image of a Lexus concept car that was used by Tom Cruise in the film “Minority Report” was photographed under tricky lighting conditions at the Colorado Convention Center using a Leica Digilux 1 set on Auto White Balance. While the color is not perfect, it’s certainly in the ballpark.
For most images, I use the Canon EOS D-60’s Daylight setting. It’s the best choice for outdoors, but I also use it inside when making window light portraits. Under these lighting conditions, this setting creates a warm, romantic effect that I like.
The camera’s Incandescent setting is amazing; it’s like loading a film camera with Tungsten color slide film or a forgiving color negative film, such as Fuji 800. When shooting under typical living room lights, you may want to shoot a few test shots to see if you need to increase exposure, but the color balance should be right on.
Pro Tip: Mellow Gel
One of my favorite portrait techniques is to set the camera on Tungsten, which will make the background bluish, and place an orange gel over the flash to keep the subject color accurate. You can shoot this in Program and ETTL mode, but it works better if you underexpose the background a bit in manual mode. This technique takes some practice and success ultimately depends on the flash’s power output and how “correct” the gel is to get the desired effect.
The Cloudy color balance setting is a great way to warm up photographs made on cloudy or overcast days also can also be used during twilight or evening to keep your images from being too cool or blue.
Fulfilling fill: My VW GTI 337 was photographed at twilight using a Canon EOS D60 set on the Cloudy setting and in manual exposure mode. Lighting was mainly from the headlights bouncing off the garage door, but fill light illuminating my wife Mary came from a Canon 420EX flash with a gold Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce diffuser attached.
Fluorescent lights change in color as they age, but I’ve found the Fluorescent setting is a good place to start when an area is lit with fluorescent tubes.
When using studio flash units, I have found that the Flash setting may be too warm or too cool, depending on the brand of camera you’re using and I seldom use it, preferring to use the Daylight setting for most flash shots.
Custom mode? It’s easy!
Some users are intimidated by the idea of using Custom mode. You might think is difficult to use, but it’s not. Under tricky lighting conditions all you need to do is use the Custom setting and make an exposure of something that’s white. The camera will store that image and use it to color correct your subsequent images. While some people just look for something “white” in the scene, there are too many interpretations of white paint out there, so I bring my own. The flip side of the Kodak Grey card is white, and makes an ideal companion for the photographer interested in making color correct images to start with, saving lots of time that would be spend later tweaking image files.
After the fact: No matter what kind of setting you choose, the use of a color correction Photoshop-compatible plug-in, such as Pictographics iCorrect Professional, (www.picto.com) can quickly clean up many color shifts.
Joe Farace is coauthor of the book, “Better Available Light Photography.” You can visit his websites at www.joefarace.com, www.joefaraceshootscars.com, and www.takeyourcameratoworkday.com.
