Photography nitty gritty #8: White balance

No you aren't crazy, I did skip #7 and went right to #8. That's because my plan was to write up some type of really brilliant post where we learn to combine what we learned in the previous lessons to get perfect exposure. But I don't have any sample pictures that I am willing to post yet, and its way to hot out right now for me to wander around in search of some.

So we're going to skip that for now and go on to something else. We're going to talk about white balance. Actually, lets back up a step first and talk about why white even needs to be balanced. White is white, right? Wrong. Sunlight, fluorescent lights, and incandescent (regular) light bulbs all produce a different color of light. Natural sunlight also varies depending on the time of day and the conditions. This variance in color is referred to as the "temperature" of the light, as some light is cooler (a more blue-ish tint) and some types of light are warmer (or have a yellowish hue).

That means, that depending on what your lighting conditions are, things will appear slightly different colors. You've probably noticed that yellowish cast you sometimes get on pictures taken using indoor lighting. That's because incandescent lighting is a very yellow light. You don't notice it as much with your eyes because your brain is very adept at realizing what color things "should" be and then interpreting what it sees accordingly. The camera, on the other hand, is completely unbiased. If the lighting is yellow (or blue-ish, or green-ish) the image will have a colored tint.

For example, this picture was taken in a restaurant with incandescent lighting. See how the white bowl looks yellowish? [ok, some clarification here... it did look yellowish. but it was underexposed. and when i fixed that, it *ahem* brought out the yellow a bit more. so now its not so much "yellowish" as it is "straight up orange"]

Prior to Mr. Z's departure, we tried to squeeze in a meal at all
our favorite restaurants. Once he's settled in, he plans to blog about
the places we will miss most.

The key to getting rid of this tint is to tell your camera what color the light is so that it can adjust the colors of the image so that the tint is gone and white is actually white. This is done using the white balance setting. By telling the camera what the lighting situation is, the camera can adjust its coloring to make the photo look more natural.

So if you tell the camera that you are indoors with incandescent lighting, it will assume that the lighting is yellow and it will cool it down, or make it more blue to compensate. For example this is the same rice pudding (delicious, by the way) but instead of leaving it on automatic white balance, i switched it to the incandescent setting (looks like a light bulb on the WB menu).

This is just one of the photos from our most-est favorite Indian place EVER

A note about auto white balance... your pictures will probably look better than they would if you forgot and left it on the completely wrong WB setting, but its not necessarily always the best option. The camera looks at the scene as a whole and then bases its adjustments on that so if you have mixed light sources, you may still end up with a funky colored photo. In the first picture above, the background (which was the view outside the window) is actually pretty natural coloring, but the subject of the photo (my dessert) which was lit by light bulbs rather than sunlight is an unappetizing orange. by changing the setting to incandescent, the subject now looks more appetizing while the outdoor background has a bluish hue.

This is what direct sunlight looks like when shot with the various white balance settings. (You can click on it to view a larger version)


Again, the bright blue of the incandescent setting is because your camera assumes that the lighting is going to be very yellow and adjusts towards blue to compensate. However, if the light is more neutral rather than yellow, you end up with a crazy blue photograph. Hence, if you change your white balance when indoors, its important to remember to change it back when you go back outside the next time.

Just as another example, here are some more cherries. These are slightly different shots, but they were taken one after another, in the same lighting conditions. The first was on Auto WB while the second was taken using the cloudy setting.



Unlike incandescent, on the cloudy setting, the camera assumes that the light will be a cooler, more blue tone, so it makes it more yellow to warm it up.

There is also a custom white balance option on most DSLR's. This can be set using what's called a gray card. I don't remember how to do it because I never do. But when using this setting, you essentially tell the camera exactly what "temperature" of light renders white as true white in a given lighting situation.

back to cherries

i've gotten a lot of positive feedback on my cherry photograph, so a big thank you to everyone who said nice things about it. mr. z really likes it as well, and we're thinking of perhaps making it into some note cards or a print of some sort. what with christmas on its way and all...

but anyway, on the subject of cherries, i mentioned in a previous post that we got up early one morning while in NY to watch the tail end of the cherry harvest. mr. z's immediate family had actually finished up their orchards prior to our arrival, but were helping a cousin finish up his.

it starts like this...


that's two separate (and very large) pieces of machinery, one driving down each side of the row of trees. mr. z's brother, whom i will call dan (because that's his name) is on the left driving the shaker and his dad is on the right driving the other thing.

dan puts the shaker right up close to the tree and does this...


which is the best i could do to convey the violent tree shaking that ensues. apparently they spray the trees with some stuff that makes the cherries fall from the tree more easily.


the cherries all fall on to a conveyor belt on the machine mr. z's dad is driving then go up another conveyor before being dropped into a tank of water.


i got yelled at for taking the conveyor belt picture because it put me right in the path of the fan that blows all the leaves and twigs out of the way.


then there are some youngsters (looking mighty pleased to be up before 6 am) scooping any twigs, leaves, or rotten cherries out of the water. apparently the good stuff sinks, the rest floats.

before the whole operation, the tree looks alot like this...


and afterwards there's just a lonely cherry or two, still hanging on. but as you've seen, the lonely cherries make for better pictures. :)

true love is...

... letting him take your dog away.

this is nizhoni. (ni-show-nee) her name means beautiful in Navajo. she is so named because she was the ugliest dog we'd ever seen back when sister drove her across the country to leave her at my apartment. we were going for irony.


we were also stuck with nizhoni because our Navajo translator informed us (in a rather annoyed tone) that there is no Navajo word for sloth. its not my fault she looked a lot like this when she first came into our lives.

this is Sid the Sloth, from Ice Age, for those of you without kids or a love of disney/pixar animation

she is also affectionately known as nizhoni-pony, short-round, and chunky-monkey. what can i say, she has put on a bit of weight since her Sid the Sloth days. she is by far the friendliest dog i have ever known, though she can be a bit pushy at times. she is also currently in a bad mood because i trapped her in the bathroom and forced her to take a bath, but most of the time she's a pretty sweet dog.

she's my sweet dog but since mr. z is moving to Texas all by himself on Thursday, i'm letting him take her along for company. it will be the first time since i got nizhoni that the two dogs will be separated for anything longer than a few days, and we're not really sure how the dogs are going to react.

she leads a very difficult and tiring life, clearly

so why are mr. z and nizhoni leaving us? well, for those that don't know us personally, mr. z just took a job at Texas Tech but i have a year of pharmacy school to finish up. Fortunately my last year is all rotations so i can do them anywhere i want. Unfortunately, we did not know where mr. z was going to get a job last fall when i had to submit my rotation requests so i won't be doing them in Lubbock. Instead i will be moving around the country staying with friends and family. after the wedding in october, when I officially move out of ohio, mr. z will keep both dogs and i will rejoin the gang in Lubbock next June.

this also means that we are currently in the middle of sorting everything in our apartment into "things i can't live without and must keep here with me," "things that will be more easily moved by professionals than by me and a very small hatchback car and that must therefore go to Texas now," and "crap that we want to get rid of but that will suffice as my furniture for the next two and a half months." needless to say its been quite the pain in the ass. its also been very distracting, and hence i haven't gotten around to any meaningful blog updates, but i promise there will be some eventually.

A bit of nature

Another fun thing about getting to hang out in the country for a few days with nothing to do is that you can just wander around with your camera taking pictures of whatever.


I never knew that milkweed blossomed...

Pretty, isn't it? (especially for a weed) Mr. z's parents and brother grow cherries and apples for a living so I got to see a cherry harvest for the first time (more on that later). I think they thought me a tad bit crazy for wandering around the orchards taking closeups of the trees.

I don't particularly like getting up early but occasionally its worth it.

Cuteness overload...

Warning: Saccharine sweetness ahead. Continuing to view this blog may induce cuddling behaviors.

Ok, I warned you. We spent the last few days in upstate NY visiting Mr. Z's family one last time before he moves far far away (to Lubbock, TX). While there, we met with several of the wedding vendors and did other useful, productive things. When not doing productive things, I spent the rest of the visit doing what I always do while there... oogling my future-mother-in-laws bunnies and pestering Mr. Z to get me one of my own.

That's right, Mr. Z's mom raises rabbits. And not just any old boring rabbits, angora rabbits. Super fluffy, incredibly soft, cuddle-inducing bunnies. You don't believe me?? check 'em out.


you can't honestly tell me you don't want to squeeze it.


If you are a knitter, you've probably fondled skeins of angora in the yarn shop, or better yet knit with it. (I'm too poor at the moment to buy angora, but I'm definitely guilty of yarn shop fondling). Or maybe you own an angora sweater, and you know how incredibly soft it is against your skin. Well before it makes it to a sweater, or even a ball of yarn, it looks like this.


Or these.



Did you know that rabbits cool themselves with their ears? If its too hot when they are little, their ears grow too big and flop over. This next little guy can't be a show rabbit because angoras have to have "uppy-ears" (that's the *ahem* technical term I just made up) and he has one floppy one. Mr. Z informs me that Lops, which are supposed to have floppy ears, sometimes have uppy-ears so they tape quarters to them to make them drop. that's your fun fact of the day. don't tell PETA.


Ok, Mr. Z has informed me that since the ear isn't all the way down, he might be able to show. This is me having a conversation with Mr. Cottontail here about not using his little bunny talons to try to climb my torso. I tried to smuggle him home in my shirt but Mr. Z caught me.


this is a giant angora. he has funny ear tassels. and creepy red eyes.


and just in case you weren't choking on the cuteness, I saved the best for last.


if you did not say aww, you have no soul.

Ack!!

Oh dear... my contribution to the AllMediocre giveaway has just been announced and I feel all unprepared! Its like having unexpected house guests or something. I feel like I should vacuum, or set out some lemonade and light a candle that smells like baking cookies or whatever it is good hostesses do. (Which is probably not sit around in their underwear drinking wine, but you can't see me so no judging)

If you did not come here from AllMediocre and are wondering what on Earth I'm talking about, you should go check it out. Its a whole week of giveaways, and you don't even have to be a blogger to take part. I'm giving away a set of notecards, but there are all sorts of other goodies you can win too. Just check it out below...

Crafty bags

I still have a back log of stuff that I want to post about, but considering I have spent more time in one pharmacy or another than I have at home this week, finding time to blog has been difficult. My loooong week was brightened today, however, when a very sweet gentlemen attempted to set me up with his friend. This friend, who was sitting in the passenger seat (gotta love a pharmacy with a drive-thru...) seemed a bit mortified, but its the thought that counts. right??

Coming up in the near future are some crafting projects complete with instructions, possibly some wedding goodies, and another photo post. I'm sure you all can hardly wait. Until the next photography post, you may want to check out another beginner tutorial I stumbled onto yesterday. You can find it here and though she's only a few posts in, its pretty good. She gives out homework assignments, so its more involved; but I imagine that probably helps a lot with the learning process.

Anyway, this post involves the mystery project from a few weeks ago, and the fabric goodies i got in the mail several months ago. And, now that both of my Pay it Forward recipients have received their gifts, I can blog about them.

This is the Charlie pattern from Burda Style. Its a free downloadable pattern and its so easy to make, its ridiculous! Each one took me maybe an hour... well, minus the all the ripping I had to do on the first one because I got a little gung-ho and accidentally stitched my bag shut. But, I mean, besides that its great.


The yellow one turned out to be my favorite one of all. The fabrics worked perfectly together. Along with a set of notecards, it went to live happily ever after at Jenny's house.


This one went to live in Minnesota at Nuttnbunny's house. FedEx tells me it was delivered but I haven't heard from her. I really hope she likes it (and the notecards). The red looks neon in this picture but it wasn't really that bright... I don't think anyway.


And this one stayed with me. I've developed a fondness for these types of patterns, and since I can't seem to pass up anything green it only seemed natural that I keep this one. It makes a fantastic knitting tote.