Dietary advice and photo advice needed, in Ohio

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Monday, February 7. 2011

Dietary advice and photo advice needed, in Ohio

Back last night from a quick visit to a snowy and frigid central Ohio. Naturally, we had breakfast at Bob Evans'. Stupid not to:

This was my "be fit" breakfast. Yum:

But look how the outdoor shot is washed out and blue, and the indoor shots were not. I think I fiddled with my settings, but I don't know what I did wrong. It's on full auto, I think.

Every outdoor shot I took, unless there were some lights in the photo, did the same thing.

For another example, this shot (while snow falling from a grey sky) should have been pretty nice, but it's blue:

This problem is new to me. Don't tell me to photoshop it. I don't do that.

Look at this one. This could have been darn good:

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 05:01 | Comments (22) | Trackbacks (0)

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Use adobe photoshop or something like it to boost the yellow and reduce the blue. Forget about the camera and just retouch all the pics once they are on the computer.

#1 sam goodman on 2011-02-07 05:25 (Reply)

Twilight overcast is blue; as is snow taken in daytime shadow.

It's from all the blue scattering in the sky without the addition of unscattered yellow sunlight.

#2 rhhardin (Link) on 2011-02-07 05:45 (Reply)

Though yours are much bluer than they should be.

The camera ought to auto-balance it out better. Look for some bad setting turning the balance off.

#3 rhhardin (Link) on 2011-02-07 05:54 (Reply)

Looks like your white balance was set for 'incandescent light'. I'm not sure how that would happen in full-auto mode, though.

#4 wolfwalker on 2011-02-07 05:54 (Reply)

Your camera may have a light balance feature that's set to "fluorescent" rather than "daylight." Mine (Nikon D70) does, and I'm always forgetting which one it's set to.

#5 Richard Lorenzen on 2011-02-07 05:57 (Reply)

Put me down for the "white balance" team, as well.

Not sure what kind of camera you're using, but just because it is in auto-exposure mode, does not necessarily mean you've also got it set for auto-white balance. Your instruction manual should explain it all.

BTW, you don't need to use anything as elaborate as Photoshop to make basic colour corrections, etc. There's a lot of good, simple, free software that can do the job right smartly. I like Irfanview. It's a nice image viewer, as well.

#6 rg on 2011-02-07 06:50 (Reply)

I like to get the pic done right, from the camera.

#6.1 Bird Dog on 2011-02-07 06:54 (Reply)

Who doesn't? But for those occassions where it doesn't come out perfectly, why suffer? I like to not get a flat tire -- but I still carry a spare.

#6.1.1 rg on 2011-02-07 11:08 (Reply)

you changed one of the settings on your camera for the kind of light--looks like it is set for incandescent light. go through the menus and restore everything to default setting.

#7 peter on 2011-02-07 07:10 (Reply)

Thanks for input.
I think I screwed up a setting, but I have no recollection of when - or why.

#8 Bird Dog on 2011-02-07 07:56 (Reply)

Snow will always look blue unless you create the right white balance. The reason snow gives this blueish cast is because the light isn't coming from one direction - snow is very reflective of light and all those crystals pointing here there and everywhere confuses the camera's normal operating system. What it thinks is blue is actually white, but it doesn't know that. Digital cameras also have a similar problem with the color green, but that is a different issue.

I don't know what kind of camera you are using so I can't give exact advice but take it off auto white balance. Now if you are using a point and shoot, then there should be a setting in the settings menu (sometimes called pre-programmed or program settings) for snow - that is an auto correction which works in most instances - not all. The other method is to get into the settings menu, reset the white balance from auto to temperature and adjust the white balance for a little hotter light source - 7500º to 9600º would be a good place to start. Note that sometimes you can't get the camera to NOT take a blue snow picture - you have to do that in post processing.

Just looking at the images, I suspect two things - not enough light (cloud cover - time of day) - which means that you needed a longer shutter speed or a wider aperture to get more light to the sensor and of course white balance - it's much too cool to get a good image. The colors are obviously there so it has to be one of those two - or possibly both.

With respect to "I don't do Photoshop". I mean no disrespect BD, but that is lame. Every photographer who has taken great pictures uses some kind of post processing. If you send pictures to Wal-Mart to process, they are color corrected and most of the time you don't know it unless you specify not to. A lot of the magic of Ansel Adams "Moonrise" or "Dunes" was done in the dark room not in the camera - the camera only took the image - the real work was done afterwards.

To say that you want the image to look exactly what it looked like when you took the image - well, just look at what happened to your blue images. You didn't see it that way, but the camera did and the only way to "fix" it would be in post-processing to bring it back to what you say when you took it.

Even if you took the perfect shot, all the colors were spot on, everything in balance, it still isn't what you saw - the eye and the brain do not look at the scene the same way the camera does - everything is processed differently.

Here's your barn image color corrected. I didn't have the original file so it was just a quick pass with exposure control and a trip through the temperature control, but it kind of proves the point.

http://www.swsports.org/images/Pictures/2-6-11ohio011.JPG

The Mennonite women had two problems - one as the blue issue, the other was the huge white space in them in the middle of the picture - which you can see in the black and white conversion.

http://www.swsports.org/images/Pictures/2-6-11ohio016.JPG

So, to review - change the temperature setting from auto white balance to 7500 to 9600º - you may have to experiment with that a little - and two get a good post processor. :>)

#9 Tom Francis on 2011-02-07 08:21 (Reply)

The white balance is off. Reset the camera defaults. On the Nikon cameras there is a button to set the white balance, you may have inadvertently pushed it.

#10 Peccable (Link) on 2011-02-07 08:41 (Reply)

forget the camera, I want breakfast. Yogurt and cereal-bar are not cutting it this morning...

#11 mrmacs on 2011-02-07 08:56 (Reply)

The white balance for those photos is set to Manual. Just reset it to Auto if you don't want to force a correction.

#12 newlangsyne on 2011-02-07 09:16 (Reply)

As the others have pointed out, it's your white balance setting.

I shoot like you do, Bird Dog. If I can't get consistently awesome results right out of the camera, I don't bother buying the blasted thing.

Which is why I still shoot slide film for my really important work, but that's a rant for another day. :D

Tom Francis has the facts right, but I can't say I agree with his conclusion. If it is possible to set the camera (or buy one that doesn't need to be fiddled with, hence my love affair with Fuji and Olympus) to take good pictures, then the photographer has much more time to go take pictures.

Does anyone really think Ansel Adams enjoyed spending all those hours in the dark room?

#13 Randy Rager (Link) on 2011-02-07 10:28 (Reply)

Where are you getting slide film developed?

#13.1 MikeinAppalachia on 2011-02-07 10:54 (Reply)

North Coast Photo, in California. I ship it out, they ship it back within a week.

Medium format film (6x4.5) is currently running me about $50.00 a roll for 32 exposures when you add up purchase price from either Adorama or B&H, shipping, developing and scanning.

Sounds expensive, until you see my prints.

#13.1.1 Randy Rager (Link) on 2011-02-07 19:33 (Reply)

We note, however, Mr. Dog, that no one has addressed your plaintive plea for dietary advice.

My advice, looking over the above pic, is that it's too late for advice. Despite looking like something that ought to be served in a dog dish, I have to go on record as noting that my roomie up in Lakeland -- a true Southern boy -- would drag me to the local Bob Evans about once a month and order a meal that looked exactly like the above. Me, I'd order something respectable where one used actual eating utensils to pick up the food -- as referred to using the biscuit -- but that's just me.

Anyway, if the above is your average daily fare, then I'd say you should have dropped dead from clogged arteries about a decade ago, and thus should awake every day feeling invigorated and refreshed at having cheated death once again.

As far as the picture problem goes, I think the camera's broken. They look too blue for just a mere color correction. Open the Settings, make sure everything's set to default, go take a snap. If it's blue, toss the piece of junk in the waste basket and go buy another one. (This is presuming that whatever you're using to import the pics to the computer isn't mis-tweaked and causing the blue.)

Also, for what it's worth, the above can't be color-corrected in Photoshop. They're in 'bluescale' (as referred to a black & white pic which is 'grayscale'), and the compensating colors don't exist. I gave one a spin, just for fun. Hence my conclusion that this isn't mere color correction on the camera's part, and that something sounds el-broko.

Personally, I like my Kodak because it has a regular viewfinder as well as the LCD screen. Using the LCD screen to frame the picture is a horrific waste of battery power. In my case, what little juice that was used gets charged while it sits in the docking bay transferring the pics. In the four years I've owned it, I don't think the battery charge has ever dropped below half.

On the other hand, my mom swears by her Instamatic, so be sure to keep all of your options open.

#14 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2011-02-07 11:15 (Reply)

For some people the result is important, for others the craft that gets to the result is important. Part of the craft may be knowing the settings on the camera, part of the craft may be how to fix it (to the extent it can be fixed) in developing.

We really do expect a lot from our point-and-shoot or even SLR cameras. With my early cameras (and I am a poor amateur) I would have wanted completely different film for the indoor shots you show vs. the outdoor ones. That modern digital sensors and the software in cameras can account for and correct for the non-linearities of our visual sense is still amazing to me. The vast majority of the time the camera will be right, but there are lots of specific lighting situations that will fool the camera and give results that are too perceptually different between what we remember seeing in life and what we see on the flat print or screen under completely different light.
It is for this reason that the camera maker gives us all those "wrong" settings, because each one is "right" for some particular circumstance, and some of their users will take advantage of that facility to make better photos.

So the original question was "how do I fix the camera". Some responded that you can fix the photo (too), which wasn't the question, and then some perhaps reacted to the perceived message that fixing the photo is "cheating".

In answer to the question, the few digital cameras I've used have a menu option that resets the camera to the default state in which it came from the factory. That is what I'd look for. You may then have to reset the date and time.

#15 Douglas2 on 2011-02-07 11:24 (Reply)

I don't have a DMC-LX5, but on my cheap Lumix the "reset" is about the 22nd (!) choice on the "setup" menu.

Lens: 10 mm
(Max aperture f/2)
Exposure: Auto exposure, Program AE, 1/400 sec, f/3.5, ISO 80
Flash: Off, Did not fire
Focus: Auto
Date: February 5, 2011 12:06:41PM (timezone not specified)

152,688 bytes (0.15 megabytes) Image compression: 75%
7% crop of the 2,112 × 1,408 (3.0 megapixel) original

#15.1 DOuglas2 on 2011-02-07 12:26 (Reply)

"Even if you took the perfect shot, all the colors were spot on, everything in balance, it still isn't what you saw - the eye and the brain do not look at the scene the same way the camera does - everything is processed differently."

Spot on. I wish more people who post comments to photography forums grasped that important concept. They go on and on about the WB settings in their expensive cameras but can't accept the fact that the response of any camera sensor to light does not perfectly replicate that of the human eye and different people have different color responses. I have a fancy dancy camera, the Nikon D7000, and I have yet to find an automatic adjustment that forces it to yield photos with the same color rendition that I see when I am looking directly at the scene. It doesn't matter. If the colors of the photo are satisfying to me, if not absolutely accurate, I'm fine with that. I'm not a machine and my camera is not a human being.

#16 Agent Cooper on 2011-02-07 16:39 (Reply)

My comment about white balance was related to the EXIF data in the photo. The camera's white balance had really been modified.

#16.1 newlangsyne on 2011-02-08 10:18 (Reply)

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Monday, February 7. 2011

Dietary advice and photo advice needed, in Ohio