Different Camera’s, Different Color’s

[THoey]

My wife and I recently went to a friends wedding and took over 300 pictures between us. She used her Canon 40D with a 17-55mm lense and 580 EX II flash. I used my Olympus C-4000.

Now, the Canon is 10.1 MP and the Olympus is only 4.0 MP, so her pictures have a lot better detail to them. But, pictures taken inside the church on her Canon have an orange – yellow tint to most of them, while generally the same picture taken with the Olympus did not. Is there some sort of setting she needs to think about using while indoors to maybe let in more light?

I have attached two similar pictures, one taken by the Canon and one taken by the Olympus. I have scaled both of the pictures down to 800 X 600 as they were 3888 X 2592 (3.3 MB) and 2288 X 1712 (652KB) respectively.

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[Elsinore]

What was her white balance setting? Overall, I’d say her shot looks slightly more natural to the setting (indoor light does have a warm cast, and the Olympus has a bit of green to it on my monitor), however, Canon’s approach to auto and tungsten white balancing is known to be very yellow/orange and not terribly neutral. Every time a new Canon comes out, it’s the same result with indoor lighting, and the speculation (I’m not sure Canon have officially confirmed this) is that Canon’s orange cast is intentional because people expect indoor lighting to be warmer. Different manufacturers handle white balancing differently, though.

If she shot RAW, she can set the white balance after the fact to get something more neutral. If she only shot jpg’s, she can probably color balance a bit by adding some blue and cyan and removing some yellow and red.

[THoey]

Okay… So, in the future, should we change to RAW photo’s and then create a custom setting for indoor shots so the white balance might be a little more neutral?

I should have taken a photography class. What I learned to get that merit badge was too long ago and far away…

[Elsinore]

lol yeah, shooting RAW gives you more flexibility, especially if you’re in light that changes (outdoors would be one example with intermittent clouds) and/or multiple settings in the same shoot. Custom white balance is usually the best choice for any camera that has the capability. I’ve heard good things about the Whibal cards for white balancing, though they seem a bit pricey and kind of hard to find.

[THoey]

Ok, we will have to play with the RAW and white balance settings for future shoots. For now, I want to try and fix these photo’s using Photoshop. Image menu –> Adjustments –> Auto levels appears to help some. Is that how you would change the image?

[Elsinore]

Auto levels can help, or color balance (not sure where that’d be in PS, but in the GIMP it’s under tools—>color tools…I’m sure there’s something similar in PS). In levels, you can also pick a gray point (at least you can in GIMP and I think you can in PS as well) from somewhere in the scene. Try picking different points in the rock wall (maybe the mortar) behind the couple or in the cushions on the chairs around the altar…look for something that should approximate middle (18% reflectance) gray. If you can find a good gray point in the scene itself, you can get some pretty decent color correction.

To counteract color cast with the color balance tool, you need to add in the opposing color. Yellow’s opposite is Blue, Magenta’s is Green, and Cyan’s is Red. So if you shoot under fluorescents and have a green color cast, try adding more magenta to counteract it. To counteract the yellow/orange of tungsten lights, add blue and cyan (thereby counteracting yellow and red). You’ll probably need to add more blue than cyan. In GIMP, you can add colors to the shadows, midtones, and highlights, but typically I stick with the midtones, and maybe just a bit to the highlights. This can be a tedious, trial-and-error process, so if you have some good gray points in your scene, I’d suggest trying that first.

[THoey]

Thanks Elsinore. When we bought the lense it came with some filters as you mention. Too bad we didn’t at least try a couple shots with them to see if they would have helped. Going to take a while before we figure out all the intricacies of this new toy… 🙂

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