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Colour Temperature and Kicking Kittens.
August 20th, 2009
I traveled once with a photographer obsessed with white balance. He routinely accessed the deeper menus on his Nikon and played with changing the parameters on his white balance, as though he was on a quest to discover the perfect magic setting. He quizzed me about color casts and how I set my white balance, and I think it truly deflated him to discover that not only was I not in possession of Kabbalistic knowledge on white balances, but that I actually didn’t seem to care. When I told him I just set my camera to auto white balance he looked like I’d just kicked his kitten.
Like so much in the photography world we’re very good at getting sidelined by issues counterfeiting as important. Now, there’s some work that’s colour-critical, and for that it’s important to nail your white balance. Get a grey card, do a custom white balance, and do it right. But for the rest of us, it’s a matter of interpretation. And I find it amusing because the same people that want to know “if that image is photoshopped” are the same ones that are prone to making good and sure the image is perfectly colour-balanced. But it’s important to remember that for most of us it’s more critical that the colour balance of the image be an ally in what we’re trying to communicate than to be perfectly accurate. It is, to put it another way, completely subjective. It’s a matter of interpretation.
This post isn’t about white balance. It’s about remembering what matters and focusing on that. I read a pop-theology book several years ago called “Adventures in Missing The Point” and while I’ve mostly forgotten the contents, the title of the book taught me so much. It is still a constant reminder not to get sidelined from the task at hand. That task will be different for all of us, we all photograph for different reasons. What matters is that you keep the main thing the main thing. In the case of white-balance, if your work is colour-critical, then by all means freak out about your white balance either in capture or in post. You have to. But if your work is a matter of interpretation or expression, then the “right” white balance is the one that allows your photograph to best express your vision, and as such I suggest you spend less time getting it “right” and more time playing with it. The same goes for everything. Craft matters, so does technique, but for most of us they serve our vision and are an act of expression. As such, all bets are off.
The image above is essentially the same one, set to different colour temperatures. Which one’s right? Doesn’t matter. What matters is which one most closely aligns the image to how I think and feel about the Paris Metro. Want to know the top-secret way I deal with colour-balance? I set the camera to Auto White Balance. I shoot in RAW. I bring the image into Lightroom and push sliders around until it looks the way I want it to. Not very technical, you say? Life’s too short.
By the way, I love kittens, so please don’t call PETA or send nasty emails. Instead, put that rage to good use and go play with your white balance. Try setting it to something wildly irresponsible and see what happens.
I follow the same technical approach – AWB, RAW and Lightroom. Works for me. I think the only time I’ve ever set a custom white balance was shooting a hockey game. And that probably had more to do with me knowing nothing about hockey (I’m Australian – ice hockey is an alien sport :0) than it did about anything technical with the images.
I just started shooting in RAW and it makes life so much easier, especially when it comes to White Balance.
@Craig: They have Ice Hockey here?
@Jacob – Even stranger, I shot it in Taiwan not Aust.
Great post David, and I agree – life is too short.
works for me too. awb all the way. shoot first, correct later..or “interpret” later.
i think your post just put all those photographers that host “workshops” on “white balance” out of business.
Sometimes I’ll dial in the approximate “look” in the white balance as well as the colour settings in camera so that i can show a client what the shot “may” look like after processing…but i know that once that files comes into lightroom it reverts back to adobe’s version of what it should be anyway…
unless you shoot jpgs, awb. see, shoot, then interpret.
I am a bit confused by this. You say, “don’t worry about white balance” but then confess to using the perfect solution (RAW and adjust later). I agree with your approach but understand the friend obsessing over white balance if he was shooting jpeg or film.
I agree that white balance can be a powerful creative tool to influence the mood of an image, and producing an accurate representation is often not important.
Anyway, for this image, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to balance for both fluorescent and tungsten… It’s all about choices. Nice thing with raw is that you can make that choice afterwards.
I have permanently set mine to uniWB. That way I never have to worry about it.
I whole-heartedly agree… life IS too short… and when it comes to white balance… I neither am concerned. Sure, SOMEtimes you want to match the scene exactly. But that is the benefit of shooting RAW. Get close. Tweak it later. In doing so, you may just find that something besides “accurate” makes a much better image.
I scratch my head when I see photogs running around taking a shot of a calibration card before every other shot. What a waste of LIFE indeed!
One of my favorite parts of digital is that white balance isn’t an issue while shooting. It’s just a slider in Lightroom.
Agreed, David. AWB 100% of the time. I cherish my intimate relationship with Lightroom sliders.
This post and the beautiful images that accompany it remind my of a quote I came across somewhere in a discussion about comparing color images to black and white images. “Color images are about one thing: color.” Now, whether you agree or not, the point I took away from the discussion was that when a viewer is looking at a color image, the first impression they have is an emotional one based on the color of the image. When one is looking at a b&w image, since the color is eliminated, you look at something else (composition, tonality, whatever). One of the things I love about your images, David, is how you treat color, more like a painter does, trying to capture emotion.
David you made my day. I do it the same way and I absolutely agree in your bottomline: focus on what to focus on for what you are doing. RAW + AutoWB + LR works fine for me.
Couldn’t agree more! AWB rules. I am definitely of the “play with it til it looks right” school. In fact I often use more than one WB setting for the same image if it helps me better portray my vision. I wrote a little blurb about it a little while ago on my blog: http://younesbounhar.com/photography-tips/balancing-act/
@ Liam – I’m not saying don’t play with it or that white balance isn’t important – it’s very important. Important that it looks and feels the way you want, not usually so important that it’s by the numbers. So I’m advocating a bit less paranoia in capture and more play and experimentation in the digital darkroom.
@Younes – Yes, I remember that post. I’m embarassed to say that was one of those DOH! moments for me as it had just never occured to me to do that.
@ Chris Klug – You flatterer, you. Now I’m blushing
Thanks.
Once again Thank you for reminding us that it is about the message and feeling that the image conveys not the technology. Doesn’t matter how you get there as long as it says something you wanted it to.
Thanks, Dave. Very good advice. I recently purchased the ExpoDisc because I wanted to be spot-on with WB and have used it once!! Like my tripod, I pull it out only occasionally. The fact that we can adjust the WB later so easily in Aperture or Lightroom when we shoot in RAW frees us from the worry. Thanks for reminding us of that fact, Dave!
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I’m surprised so many people love AWB.
Personally prefer to keep mine set to daylight. Then fiddle with it in LR, I find AWB often just looks dull and I’m uninspired when I first see it in my LR grid.
Perhaps it comes from shooting film.
@Younes – I’ll add my name to the list of people who never thought to do this. Cheers
Good post. Sometimes people miss this boat altogether though and leave it on AWB and never see the bad light… even in post processing. Studying other people’s photos has made me stay concious of it when I enter a different environment
This post made my day. It’s so refreshing to such hear an outstanding photographer talk like this about the importance of the image itself. Thank you.
Wonderful David! Thank you. Love the go shoot what matters to you. Now I just need to get home to my family.
Great post! Fun to play with in the camera too when shooting RAW. Bill Fortney suggested to me one day to try flourescent wb for a before dawn shot. So that’s how you get those great deep purple skies!!
[...] If you’re one of those people that’s obsessed with getting the “right” white balance for every photo, I suggest you read this point of view. [...]
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