As I See It

So here is a slightly technical tip which will help ALMOST ANYONE improve their photos. This does not only effect people who use expensive camera gear, but in fact, it is more important for those using cheaper cameras.

So here is a picture, can you tell what is wrong with it?

Maybe you don’t see it yet. But what if I upload the corrected version of this picture.

Now it makes sense. You’ll probably say, the color is wrong. But more precisely, it was a problem with white balance or color temperature. Most DSLR’s which can shoot in RAW have the advantage of being able to adjust this setting after you’ve taken a picture. However, if you’re like the many who have a point-and-shoot camera which directly links to JPEG, you’ll have to learn how to fix this in camera before you take a picture. A lot of times understanding white balance makes a big difference.

So what is white balance, and how do I fix these on my camera? Just read a little longer and I’ll show you.

White balance is exactly what is sounds like. It is a standard of balancing color, which balances white (or grey)  to produced correctly color balanced pictures. Incorrect white balance tends to shift to the red or the blue of the RGB color spectrum leaving you with unflattering shifted images. I’m baffled at how often, “professional” photographers who charge for their photos mess up white balance so often. It is embarrassing, and people will use the “creativity” moniker to justify their incorrect WB.

DON’T BE ONE OF THESE PEOPLE!

I will seriously own you.

First you’ll have to find the white balance option on your camera. It’ll look something like this.

There will be multiple options. These are usually the standard drawings to denote specific white balances. These pictures will make knowing the white balances SOO MUCH EASIER to understand. White Balance is measured in Kelvin, which is the temperature of the incident light. But Instead of memorizing each temperature for each different type of light, you can just use the pictures.

For normal sunlight situations, the sunlight mode on the far left is best. For cloudy days, the cloud. And depending on the type of lightbulb, whether it’s incandescent or fluorescent, you’ll use one of the two blinking light’s in the center. While using flash, you’ll use flash, and the custom white balance is kind of advanced for this type of tutorial. A lot of newer cameras do a pretty decent job of setting WB automatically. But your eyes are soo much better than the camera, and setting this manually will ensure you get it right the first time.

A lot of people get fascinated with photography because it is directly linked to all the beautiful things that we see in the world. We wish to capture these snapshots and share them with others as well as into the future. Many of the greats in photography have always talked about their cameras as being an extension of their own eye. In a sense, that is how we wish to perceive our cameras. However, unlike our own eyes that don’t require any semblance of tweaking, cameras are machines which we have to control. And because of this, in order to get the creative composition and control to take the picture, we have to understand the way our camera works, in and out, forewords and backwards and to the moon if that is required. 

So if you have a camera, LEARN HOW IT WORKS. I can’t emphasize this enough. It is distressing to see people with professional quality equipment on automatic mode.

The first thing you need to learn is something called Exposure. In a sense, exposure is exactly what it sounds like. The camera opens up it’s shutter for a moment of time, the light travels through a hole and is captured by the sensor. Unlike our eyes, a camera only captures one exposure and the amount of light which the camera has captured is called the exposure. There are three ways that we can adjust for this exposure, and they are called Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. You need to understand these three in and out. I won’t write out a tutorial on these three myself, because so many people have done so in such a better way than I ever could. But here is a graph and videos where you can get started.

Canon actually has a great video series which teaches you how to control these three settings and how they are used differently in different effects. You can find these videos and more taught by Chris Bay, an amazing and succinct teacher, at this site.

http://www.canon.com.au/worldofeos/learn/getting-started/

I actually watched these videos several times last year when I started getting into photography, and they are a great resource and worth every bit of time. Once you get these three key elements down, you can really start to understand how light works through these settings. Once you start to master exposure, you can really start to grasp more advanced techniques in MANUAL MODE.

However, you will not be able to spend a day learning these 3 components. You really need to get your hands on some projects and take some pictures yourself. By really experiencing the effects of changing exposure manually will you really start to become a better photographer. So get yourself out of automatic mode and switch over to manual. Taking control of exposure yourself is really the only way to take pictures.