Models Feel More Confident when Holding the White Balance Target

Do your indoor photos look yellow without flash? Outdoor photos too blue? Getting accurate colors is one of the trickier things in digital photography. Even more tricky is getting consistent colors throughout a whole shoot. The human eye or rather the human brain, is capable of making quick adjustments to the color temperature of varied lighting. Cameras are “less than awesome” at this.

There are two main factors in your camera that contribute to accurate color. Number one is of course, white balance. The second is exposure. The first goal is to take a contextually accurate exposure so as not to “wash out” color by overexposing or underexpose and cause problems losing color detail in the darker areas.

Cameras typically come equipped with white balance modes such as “auto,” “tungsten,” “fluorescent,” “daylight,” and “cloudy” as a minimum. More advanced cameras will have “kelvin” and “custom” as additional options.

“Auto” is the bottom of the rung in terms of control. It varies a bit depending on what your camera is pointed at. Point the camera at a largely red scene and it will automatically cool down the image, leaning colors toward the blue side. This is not so useful if you’re shooting someone in a bright red shirt at a close distance. It works relatively well for large scenes and landscapes.

“Tungsten” and the other “preset” light modes have a fixed color setting based on the manufacturer’s view of the color temperatures of different typical light sources. It offers a higher level of control for most users. Shooting indoors with the setting at “tungsten” will help you compensate for tungsten indoor light bulbs and get consistent color. The camera will not re-adjust based on the scene in the viewfinder. But we all know that not all tungsten lights have the same color temperature these days. A stroll through Lowe’s will reveal a wide variety of consumer bulbs at radically different temperatures. Shoot in a home where they mix and match and your images will change from room to room.

The “kelvin” setting will allow you to set a very specific color temperature number to your photos and keep that color balance for everything. This is also useful for creating a modern day photo filter. Want a warming filter? Don’t screw anything onto your lens, just crank up the kelvin number in your cameras white balance until you achieve the desired effect. Try turning it down for night scenes to get a deep blue cast on the entire photo.

In consistent or controlled lighting situations, my favorite way to set color is with the “custom” setting.  Most DSLR’s or advanced point and shoot cameras will allow the photographer to shoot a neutral color balanced image such as a white or grey card of some sort. One can then tell the camera to use that image as its neutral color reference. You can do this with a white sheet of paper, grey card stock or anything that you feel is truly neutral in color.

My personal favorite is the photovision digital calibration target (skillfully modeled above).

How to Shoot the Target for Optimal Results

You can simply shoot it close up like this in the lighting your planning on using for your shoot and then calibrate your camera to that. (If you shoot Canon, see menu, custom WB, “set” after taking the picture). Here is the big bonus- you can put your light meter away and use it to calibrate exposure as well. Just check the histogram for the shot you just took and see how it lays out.

Sample Histogram of Target Image

The spike on the left represents shadow detail (dark areas), the middle for midtones and the right side for highlights (brightest areas). As you can see, my exposure is set just about right here, nothing to dark or too bright. I am maybe just a bit underexposed. If I wanted, I could push the right spike over a bit more by opening the aperture half a stop or so. I took a few shots before tweaking my lights and camera settings before settling on this one.  I know “less talk, more model!” is what you’re thinking.

Studio Photo with no Post Adjustments (if that's possible)

This one is a quick lightroom export with no white balance or exposure adjustment. Not bad! The exposure is actually “hotter” than I expected with some bright highlights on her skin. One benefit of using the target, even if you don’t set your camera to custom white balance, is that you can take one shot of it and just fix your colors later in Lightroom or camera RAW if desired by clicking the eyedropper on the grey or white area of the card.

Same WB used Outddor with -.80 Exposure Adjustment in Post

Here is where we go outside and I forget to re-calibrate my camera for daylight. I used an off-camera flash to bring out some detail on her hair and had to reduce the exposure in Lightroom a bit. But the colors were actually okay. Studio flashes made for photography are supposed to emulate daylight, after all right?

Thanks for looking! Next up- a couple of local San Diego weddings and my lens scratch test which I hope to shoot tomorrow. No lenses will actually be harmed.

Thanks to my model, Hoda who hired me for a portrait session in Carlsbad at the new studio and played along with all my experimentation and noodling. If you need a San Diego Photographer for a project or session, please give me a shout! – R

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