White Balance Tools

Hello again,

I did a post on my Flickr page recently and one of my images still had my Spyder Cube in it as a Grey Card" reference - Which prompted questions on: "WHY?"

So, here's a quick explanation.

All lighting sources have different color temperatures to them. From warm sunlight to yellowish/green fluorescents and blueish tungsten incandescent bulbs. You want to get your White Balance set so that white colors in your image are actually white and not tinted to some other yellow/green/blue shade. With your camera on Auto White Balance, it's going to try and do this for you - Notice I said "try". Generally they do OK, but for accuracy you use a Grey Card. And shot RAW if possible.

Essentially, you're using the black, white and grey areas as a 'known reference' colors in a scene. Most photo processing software such as Photoshop and Lightroom have an Eyedropper tool that allows you to click on a "Grey Card" to set your White Balance - You're telling the software that this is a known, calibrated 18% Grey color, it will then calibrate the rest of the colors to match. You can also use in either Levels or Curves the Black, Grey and White Eyedroppers to set what are called "Black Point & White Point".

Once you've done that for the image with the cube or grey card in it, you save those settings, then when you open up any of the other images with the same lighting, just paste those settings to them (depending on which software you're using) and this allows you to batch process photos for proper White Balance and Exposure.

Now, in this image I've not only left the Spyder Cube in (just for fun), I've also done some extra tweaking of colors too. Go to my Flickr link to see the rest of the set - Playing with toys.

Here's a link to DataColor's tutorials on how to use the Spyder Cube. 

spyder.datacolor.com/learn_videos.php

Next post, which is coming up soon, will be on Night Photography.

Thanks again for coming by and reading my blog.

Things To Ponder & Wonder While Learning Photography

I love learning new things (as well as teaching them), and great quotes provide just something new to ponder - Especially ones that are not only true, but if they are scientific in nature (as science, art and photography are related) and if it applies to many fields of study (or life) and it has a bit of humor - That's even better!

Many who have followed the life of Albert Einstein know that, not only was he a genius - He also had a great sense of humor.

As you're struggling thru your latest photography challenge, ponder some of his thoughts, maybe it'll make it easier for you to get thru - Or, at least provide a nice smile.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tired anything new."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

"If "A" equal a success in life; Then, "A equals "X" plus "Y" plus "Z". Work is "X"; "Y" is Play and "Z" is keeping your mouth shut!"

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."

"You see, wire telegraph is kind of like a very, very long cat - You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand? And radio operates exactly the same way: You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

And last but not least, a sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

Tony

Learning The Ways Of The Sun & Moon

Well, we finished off our "Sunset under Deception Pass Bridge" workshop with a lot of great photos captured by all that attended. Unfortunately, on the 4th day the clouds did not cooperate so the shots weren't any fun. But, by then so many photographers had heard about our "secret spot", that we had a large party of people just having fun hanging out - and waiting, for a sunset that never showed up.

That's the most important part of our workshops, besides learning more about this fun craft - having fun hanging out with other photographers.

I'm currently at a Starbucks, on my laptop, so I don't have any of my shots with me to show here, but you can quickly go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/masterofmadness  to see them.

While I'm on the subject of sunsets and my previous blog was on the moon, I thought I'd let you in on a very useful website and it's software for predicting the times and locations of each.

It's called  "The Photographer's Ephemeris" It will allow you to choose a date and location to find out exactly when and where the sun & moon will rise and set, along with lots of other Gee Whiz info for use at your next cocktail party. TOO COOL!

Go to  http://stephentrainor.com/tools  and download the FREE software he has. It's an amazing piece of work that he's put together. Make sure you download the proper version for your type of computer, and get the  Adobe Air program too, as you'll need that to make it work.

The software's pretty self explanatory, so I'm not going to go into how to use it here. But, just in case - Read the tutorials to learn more about the sun & moon than you ever thought you needed to know.

OK, enough for today.

Thanks again for playing along,
Tony

More "Gee Whiz" Info For Shooting At Night

Hello,

Well, just had a 2nd night of our "shooting the sun going below Deception Pass Bridge workshop". The weather's been hit-n-miss, but the sunset turned out great and everyone was capturing some great shots. I was busy helping students, so I'm hoping I was able to capture some nice shots too.  I'll go out again tomorrow, weather permitting. I'll get some images up here soon.  Here's a shot I got from before, tonight's sun was more to the left.

While I'm thinking about it - The reason for this post;  When we were hiking back to the cars, we all noticed an almost full moon slowly passing behind the clouds - Another great photo op! Maybe tomorrow.

So, with that came several questions from our group - How to Shoot The Moon - So, here's your next "Gee Whiz" shooting tricks for getting great moon shots - And an upcoming workshop. I'll add those photos samplers later.

There are two things you have to keep in mind when shooting the moon;

First - It's moving!  It can actually move a distance equivalent to its diameter every 2 minutes. What this means is that if you try to go for any exposure longer than a few seconds, it will warp itself out of shape - And, the longer the exposure, the more "wiener like" it's going to become.

Second, if you're going to try and have a great, properly exposed moon with great detail and no stretching, and expect some great detail with proper exposure for your foreground objects too - Forget it! There's just too much exposure range to capture them both.

The moon can be very bright on some nights which will cause your foreground to be underexposed. If you expose for your darker foreground - expect an overly blown out & stretched moon.

Now, if you're using a wide-angle lens and the moon is small in the sky, then movement isn't as much an issue. But if you've zoomed in for a unique "Big Moon" shot - Read on.

The trick, which has been performed since the dawn of film, is to make a double exposure. That is - shoot two exposures - One for the moon and another for the foreground, without moving the camera. In the 'old days', you would shoot the 2nd image without advancing the film. Actually, it was more work than that, but that was just how those film days were - Do you still miss them? Today, we can take a couple shots of each element, setting the exposure as needed in each frame, then simply combine them in Photoshop. This provides the added benefit of a lot more control over the final image, with no wasted film and developing fees.

Ah, another digital bonus - Since you've got great moon shots, save them to drop into other photos too! But you didn't hear that here.

Exposures for the foreground should be pretty straight forward (if not, stay tuned to this blog or our Alternative Focus blog www.alternativefocus.blogspot.com for more classes or email me with questions) so go ahead and capture a couple of images, paying attention to you composition skills, then move on to your moon shots.

Now, the trick for getting a great exposure on the moon surrounded by black sky - Start with an exposure of around 1/250 second at f8 and ISO 100 for a full moon, focused on infinity. Jog to about 1/125 or 1/60 for a crescent moon. Now of course, there's going to be a bit of leeway here, depending upon other conditions, but this will get you very close.

There, you now have enough of the basic tricks for great moon shooting. Now go out and practice, study how they came out, learn what worked and more important, what didn't work, and practice again.

We've received many requests, so now we're also putting together more night & low-light photography classes, as well as some star-trail shooting.

Stay tuned to this blog and more importantly our Alternative Focus blog (www.alternativefocus.blogspot.com) for upcoming classes.  You'll also find more info & links there to our Facebook, Twitter and everything else photography in the great San Juan Islands & Skagit Valley.

Thanks,
Tony