Question regarding WB.

[MN Shutterbug]

While shooting birds today, I noticed after it got near the end of the day, the tree I was photographing near, was starting to show a yellowish tint in my viewfinder. I've never changed my WB from the auto setting. I decided to play with it a little to see if that was the problem. I soon discoverd that I was getting better colors with the WB set on halogen bulb. Is this weird or what? Or is this normal late and early in the day with the sun real low in the sky? This just seems real strange to me. Here are 2 examples. The first one is a junco with WB at the auto setting and the second one was set at halogen.

[Steve Foss]

XT, very late and very early in the day the light is yellowish, sometimes trending almost to red. The first WB is the more accurate, though the second, which is emphasizing a cool color temperature, looks more like a typical mid-day shot.

[finnbay]

Right on Steve. I brought a photographer up to Basswood for 5 days in August and he shot almost entirely early morning and late afternoon because he was looking for "warm" colors on the rocks and trees.

[Steve Foss]

Quote:

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I brought a photographer up to Basswood for 5 days in August

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Ken, you lucky bugger. I haven't been to Basswood for four years.

XT, that warm light is the light traditionally most prized by wildlife photographers because it is so mellow and rich and because, if you keep the sun behind you, there are no shadows cast on the face of the animal.

[MN Shutterbug]

But, but, but, the colors just aren't the same as they are to the naked eye. The warm color on the junco sure doesn't look good to me. It actually looks kinda brown now.

[finnbay]

Looks to me that the junco is also in the shade. That complicates things. You can see the warm on the bokahed background. Lots of dynamic range at this time of day. This might have been a place for some fill flash - although your second shot definitely looks like it's in the sun.

[buzzsaw]

Auto white balance is often more effective when the photo contains at least one white or bright colorless element, just be aware that its absence may cause problems with the auto white balance. Some people will use a grey card to get it right and others shoot in Raw and click the white balance button in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) to correct the WB if it's off.

[Steve Foss]

XT, I've found, and this is just to MY eye, not everyone's, that automatic white balance on my Canon bodies usually does a really good job duplicating what my eye sees.

Now, that's not always true and computers are rarely perfect (a digital camera's really a specialized computer), but shooting in RAW it's a simple matter to change the white balance/color temp before opening the image file. If you're shooting jpeg, you can go into levels when you open the image and remove some of the red in RGB if the photo is too "warm" or pull out some the the blue if it's too "cool." That's a very simple explanation of what's really a bit more complicated a procedure, but it can be done with not much muss and fuss in jpeg.

Setting the white balance manually isn't that hard. Check your manual to see how or if you camera allows this (not sure if the Panasonic Lumix series has that option. It DOES have that sweet Leica lens, tops among point-and-shoots.) Since the light is changing its color temperature pretty quickly very late or early in the day, it can be hard to keep up by setting manually.

[buzzsaw]

I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of messing with your Junco a bit. I pulled it into ACR (even though it was a small jpeg) and adjusted a few things and then pulled it over to the regular editing area in CS3 and applied Imagenomic Noiseaware to it and did a slight sharpening... nothing spectacular by any means.

I could probably have boosted it up a notch to make it pop more by adding some selective colors or just by dodging the grey area on its chest.

I had to go back and dodge in the chest, it was too desaturated for my tastes...

[MN Shutterbug]

Steve, yes my camera has WB adjustment. The junco that Buzz just improved, was shot with my white balance set for halogen lights. The crappy one was shot at auto.

[Steve Foss]

XT, because your camera allows you to change white balance doesn't mean it allows you to set it manually. Most of the digital cameras have a bunch of pre-set white balances, like your halogen setting.

The so-called "crappy" one looks like the colors I'm familiar with during early and late sunlight, and the problems with it are because focus locked on the branches behind the bird, not on the bird itself (or it DID lock on the bird but the bird or your hand was moving too much for the shutter speed), and because the bird is underexposed a bit. It's a low-contrast situation, and autofocus needs contrast to function at its best.