Photography Week #3: White Balancing and Capturing Quality Images on a *Light* Budget

Hi, my name is Joel Schlauer and I am a photographer based out of upstate NY. I went to school for commercial photography in Chicago with an emphasis on digital capture and post production. Sara asked me to write up a little something for her to provide a trick or two for photographing sewing projects.

Outlined below is some thoughts, a tutorial on white balancing and a quicky setup to help out when setting up for a indoor shoot. If I go above heads on this, I apologize in advance. Photography is my passion, so I go at it fully. If something isn’t clear, let me know and I’ll clarify 🙂

There are four cardinal rules I follow when taking a photograph:

1) Know thy camera

• I cannot emphasize this enough.
• You wouldn’t attempt to write a letter not knowing how to use a pencil, (at least I wouldn’t) 😀
• It is always a good idea to have the manual for the camera handy

2) No “on camera” flash, ever

• It is a fixed light source that makes for a poor capture in low lighting
• Usually causes red eye and other image artifacts
• Lighting should be large surfaces of light, not small pinpoints of light (the sun is the exception)
• If you must use a flash, use one that fits into a camera’s hotshoe, but aim it to bounce light off walls/ceiling etc.

3) Use what you have

• This includes walls, windows, trees, benches, tables and items in the environment for interest and things that aid in taking the photograph
• Common household items are very useful, have a look around
• Be creative

4) Take time and compose the image

• Digital film is cheap, but work to take the final image in as few captures as possible
• Lay fabric flat, then put precise folds in a pleasing manner
• Fluff pillows so they are plump and full, not flat.
• Review the scene
• Remove anything you don’t want in the image, avoid distractions in the picture
• Use the golden ratio, or offset the subject from the center. Divide the image into thirds and put the subject on either third. Avoid centering the subject.
• Watch the light and how it works in the scene
• Get it right and how you want it

In this brief tutorial, I’m going to tell you about white balancing and how understanding a feature on your camera can help you snap a picture that is better representing neutrals without the color casts of your light source. Near the end, I will provide a walk-through of basic equipment needed and setup to capture a descent image indoors, using nothing but foamboard, a camera and a lamp.

Have you taken a picture inside and the whole image is dark, muddy and orange? Most of us have.

Indoor photography tends to be dark without a lot of light to use. When there is light, it comes from sources that usually are meant to establish mood over lighting a subject to be photographed. Indoor lighting usually consists of lamps, maybe an overhead light, the hallway night light, florescent lighting in kitchens, etc. These usually have a certain color to them.

Take the normal household light bulb. It has a warm light that is a yellow-orange. Put it over a white piece of paper and the paper now reflects that orange color. Now understand, the mind knows that the paper should be white. It compensates for this orange shift automatically. We will see a white piece of paper. Look at it long enough and we can uncorrect it and see the color of light. A camera however, does not see a white piece of paper. It will record the light as it is, a yellow-orange coming from the paper and register it as a yellow-orange paper. A camera is non-discriminating. Period.

Take this example, the left is what the camera sees without color correction. The right is color-corrected.

White balancing is about keeping the neutrals neutral. In other words, keeping whites white, grays gray, and blacks (you guessed it) black. Cambridgeincolour.com puts it more eloquently:

“White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the “color temperature” of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light.”

Now if white surfaces in a photograph have an orange color shift then all of the other colors will have the same color shift, resulting in a orange overcast on the image if a normal incandescent light bulb is used. Below is a diagram giving different light types and showing the corresponding color cast:

Normal light bulbs aren’t the only type of lighting, you can have halogen and tungsten lighting each with their own warm color temperature. Florescent lighting is on the cool end of color temperatures.

So then, you may ask how this applies to the camera and your own photos? Most cameras have the ability to change the white balancing. Often most try to do this automagically with varying results via auto white balancing (AWB). Yuck! I tend to not let the camera do my thinking for me, so I usually set it according to the circumstances.

White balance options are often available in the menu on the camera. Below is a typical camera menu for white balancing, (more settings are listed in this menu, I am lazy and will not capture more):

You can usually choose from auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent and open shade. We’ll ignore the flash setting, because it is bleh. Just an FYI, white balance settings are not easy to access; they’re usually hidden away in the menu since they are not commonly accessed all the time. Look to you manual to see if they are accessible and how. The manner these settings are used depends on the situation:

Auto – Used when there isn’t enough time to make adjustments or you simply wish the camera to handle white balancing . . . yuck! 🙂
Daylight – Used when the subject is lit by the sun
Tungsten – Used with a warmer color temp light, such as incandescent lighting (thumbs up here)
Fluorescent – Used with cool fluorescent lighting (as you might have guessed)
Open Shade – This one is tricky, it is used when the subject is outside in shade and lit by the open blue sky.

Now if you are fortunate enough to have a custom setting under the white balancing, this is the best option to use because you can calibrate the camera for the lighting used and are not bound to the presets the camera has. If you have this function, look to your manual for the details on setting the custom white balancing. (It usually consists of photographing a white surface using the existing lighting, then photographing the subject).

That is really all there is to in camera white balancing. Just set the setting in the menu to the situation.

Now as I stated before, it is possible to do this in post-production. The cameras I am accustomed to save a captured image in a RAW format that allows for manipulation in post-production. When the intent is to color balance after the photo shoot, photographers will take a picture of a color card like the one depicted below and adjust the image in Photoshop, Lightroom or other program. A free program called Piscasa put out by Google can work as well.

The color card will tell the photographer what colors looked like when the image was captured. Then the colors can be manually changed to what they should be in post.

Now when considering the shoot itself, you can purchase color calibrated lighting and work with those. Lighting kits are available on Ebay and Amazon that produce descent lighting and should be considered if you start to shoot more and more. In the end, a professional lighting kit, (constant light or flash) will save time. But for the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll show you how to setup a simple layout that can easily change to create dramatic or even lighting.

[Capturing Quality Images on a *Light* Budget]

It is a must to bring your own light source to liven the image. In my humble opinion, you don’t need expensive camera equipment and an expensive studio to capture a descent picture. Using simple light and a descent camera, you can take a quality image of your project. I believe there are five essential must-haves when photographing any subject:

A camera
A tripod
A light source
A fill card
A quiet space to work in

I’ll go over each of these things in depth. But before we go there, if you are not comfortable with your camera or some of the details in this tutorial, I advise doing a little research on the internet about photography in general. Feel free to use the links below for some information that is readily available on the internet. (Besides, I’m lazy at times and if it’s already out there, why should I reinvent the wheel?) 😀

http://i.imgur.com/Nz7v5.jpg
http://www.uscoles.com/fstop.htm
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm

Locate the manual for your camera. This is a handy and easy to use reference for all of the mechanics and menus of your camera. Know your camera, you’d be surprised at the things it can do.

Number one on my list is a camera – yes, yes I know. It’s a no-brainer. But I want to talk more about the type of camera you should use considering the scope. The typical photographer uses a DSLR (myself included) which is short for a Digital Single Lens Reflex. Other styles include the point and shoot (P&S), (which are most consumer cameras), cell phone cameras, and motion capture cameras which are for movie capture. They all work from the same principles as the eye.

They also vary with the features they come with.

It is not my place to suggest one type of camera over others, but for this tutorial you’ll need a camera that can mount on a tripod, has the ability to take a picture with a long exposure without the flash, has a timer feature to take the picture, and can change white balancing. Don’t use a cell phone, an ipad or similar device.

Number two is a tripod to steady the camera. It should be adjustable enough to get the angle of the image you want and steady enough to keep the camera still.

Number three is a light source. Light sources can vary from a desk lamp to a florescent light fixture to the central overhead light in the room. For this tutorial, I recommend using a floor lamp with a 100-watt bulb without the lamp shade.

Number Four is a white card. This is a large flat and white surface that is used to reflect a soft white light onto the subject. Often it takes the place of a fill light and is much easier to work with than another light. It can be anything from white fabric stretched over a wood frame to a large piece of foamboard to a plywood sheet painted white. I went to an art supply store and picked up a large 30×42 foamboard for less than $5. I suggest foamboard because it is light, thin and great to use for custom white balancing.

Lastly, a quiet space to work in is a good thing. Without question distraction and other influences can greatly hamper what would be a quick, fun and easy procedure.

Photography is really about capturing light as it plays about in bright areas and is scarce in dark areas. You could also think of it as finding the happy medium. If you want to make quality image that has all the visual information required, you’ll need to manipulate the light around the subject and pay close attention the details in the light and dark areas. The key is to keep detail in the bright and the dark areas without “blowing out the whites” or killing the detail in the darks. So without further ado, here is what I think about when taking a photograph.

The very first thing I do when photographing any subject is to look at the scene/person/item and visualize it in black and white. Why black and white? Because that is all the tonal quality that needs to be evaluated when thinking about light and it’s interaction with the environment in your picture.

For example: think of a sphere in your head. Make it a dull grey sphere. Picture that sphere in a black room without light. Nothing to see, right? Now put a lamp with a bright 100-watt bulb to the right just outside your vision. The light will hit the right of that sphere and slowly wrap around the globe to eventual black. Now visualize another lamp to the far left with a 60 watt bulb, this will add light to the left of the sphere — but just enough to define the edge.

If you see a dull grey sphere with a bright right side and a dim left side with a smooth gradient from right to left, then you are getting some of the basics down.

Here, the 100-watt bulb serves as a main light, and the 60-watt bulb serves as a secondary light or fill light. The main light is positioned in a way to define shape, texture and shadows, while the fill light fills in the shadows in a way to give them detail. Additional lights can be added to modify the scene further, but that begins to go outside the scope of this tutorial.

Now let’s get down to how this can work for you.

Place the camera on the tripod an in front of the subject to be photographed. Make sure the tripod/camera are sufficiently away from the subject to capture it all, but close enough to fill the frame. Place your light source to the right of the camera, just outside the camera’s view. It should be about 45 degrees off camera right. Place the fill card to the left of the subject, just outside the camera’s view. Ensure the white card is sufficiently large to bounce light onto the subject. If it is a quilt pinned to the wall, pin the quilt so the edge is about a foot away from the corner of another wall, you can then use the second wall as a large white card.

Your setup should look something like this:

Now you set the camera up for use. Depending on the features of the camera you are using, this part will vary some.

First things first, turn the on-camera flash off. We do not want the camera adding light for us here.

Secondly, if the camera has auto-white balancing, make sure the subject has enough white to allow it to auto balance. If not, set the white balance yourself.

Thirdly, if you have a timer on the camera, it is best to use that to snap the picture. The simple act of pressing the shutter button can cause you to move the camera and blur the picture.

Fourthly, the camera has auto focus. Use it.

Lastly, most cameras have different exposure modes, for our purpose auto-exposure should be fine. If you feel adventurous, you can work the f-stop and shutter speeds yourself (and I recommend playing with them). Metering is tricky and your manual will go into how to ajust f-stops and shutter speed.

Taking the picture:

If you’ve set everything up right, take the shot. Press the shutter button and step away. The timer should count down 10 seconds, then open the shutter for a second or two and then close, capturing the light and creating your picture for you. If you have a second fill card, then press the shutter button, step behind your light source and hold up the second fill card behind the light. This will bounce more soft light in the direction of the subject.

What we’ve done is give a camera an amount of time to capture the light it needs to create an image. It’s given that a single light source with a fill card for bounce only emits a certain amount of light. The camera in a timer mode, without on-camera flash should keep the shutter open for as long as it needs to capture a descent image. This is called a long exposure. The longer the shutter is open, the more light it collects. Provided that the camera is not shaken, prodded or moved while the shutter is open, it will collect a clear image for you.

In the end, using only a camera, a lamp and a fill card, you should get a nice image.

My final piece of advise is to take your time. Make sure you got what you want. If you aren’t sure, take the camera and download the images to a computer to view them on a larger screen. You can then see if the image is in focus, if there is enough detail in the light and dark areas and that the image is composed right. If not, go back and shoot again while making the necessary adjustments. Move the light, see what the image looks like with it at 90 degrees to the subject. Experiment.

Most of all, have fun. Taking images of your creations is creating in itself. It should reflect the work you put into the original piece itself. A poor picture of a grand creation is a travesty. So make the picture great, then you will let people know the piece itself is great.

If you’d like to see some of my work, check out the links below. Happy photographing!