White Balance Question

[supercelts7]

The evening sunshine lit up some golden leaves on a tree, just outside my window tonight. Siezing the opportunity, I fired off a shot but the leaves were kinda green, rather than golden. So I went through the white balance presets and the Kelvin settings and nothing reproduced the golden colour. Why?

[kencaleno]

what time? (pm) Did you spot meter the leaves only?

[sk66]

It's probably a matter of exposure as Ken alluded to. When you "looked" at the leaves backlit they were somewhat overexposed to your eyes (your eyes couldn't/didn't cut back the highlights enough). When you took the picture with your camera, (probably program/evaluative/zone metered) it cut the highlights back much more.

Also, when your eye's start to reach their limits due to either too much or too little light, you start to loose color perception. (even if just in the periphery of the leave's "highlights")

Then there's "attention"....if the "golden" part caught your attention, you may not have noticed that it was truly mostly green.

And then there's a bunch of technical possibilities....camera settings, render settings, color balance, etc etc... But really, it's probably some combination of the first three.

[fletch]

While the explainations above are certainly plausable there is one thing you can try before discarding the shot.

White Balance is more than just Kelvin temp, there is also the tint element. (The slider below WB if you use Adobe products). that controls the hue of the photo, -ve values give a green hue, +ve values give a purple hue. I find the best setting for the slider in golden late afternoon light is often between +2 and +10 and gives you photo the golden hue you remember when combined with a Kelvin value of between 4500 and 6000.

[wulf]

Have you got the shots? It would be interesting to see them as a series (certainly the ones that came nearest). It might be that you just need to give them a little post processing tweak to capture what you envisioned.

Wulf

[supercelts7]

Originally Posted by wulf

Have you got the shots? It would be interesting to see them as a series (certainly the ones that came nearest). It might be that you just need to give them a little post processing tweak to capture what you envisioned.

Wulf

Sadly, I deleted them because I was just trying out a new lens, but having read all the replies, I believe I used pattern metering rather than spot metering, so I think the problem lies there. Thanks everyone.

[fletch]

Metering mode doesn't change anything about the final image, it is just a tool to help you get the correct exposure. Overexposed highlights can cause colour to wash out and appear undersaturated, a slight under exposure can make colours appear more saturated and vibrant. However unless you blow out the colours it shouldn't be the source of errors in hue as that is governed by the white balance combined with the light source.

So the issue is either WB or a missmatch between your memory and the actual colours in the scene. Metering mode is not the root cause of your issue. Using it as a tool may help you solve the issue once you know what it is but it is not a magic bullet that will fix your shots.

[supercelts7]

Originally Posted by fletch

Metering mode doesn't change anything about the final image, it is just a tool to help you get the correct exposure. Overexposed highlights can cause colour to wash out and appear undersaturated, a slight under exposure can make colours appear more saturated and vibrant. However unless you blow out the colours it shouldn't be the source of errors in hue as that is governed by the white balance combined with the light source.

So the issue is either WB or a missmatch between your memory and the actual colours in the scene. Metering mode is not the root cause of your issue. Using it as a tool may help you solve the issue once you know what it is but it is not a magic bullet that will fix your shots.

Have tried another shot and slightly closing the aperture corrects the colour. Thanks for the assistance everyone.

[sk66]

Originally Posted by fletch

Metering mode doesn't change anything about the final image, it is just a tool to help you get the correct exposure. Overexposed highlights can cause colour to wash out and appear undersaturated, a slight under exposure can make colours appear more saturated and vibrant. However unless you blow out the colours it shouldn't be the source of errors in hue as that is governed by the white balance combined with the light source.

So the issue is either WB or a missmatch between your memory and the actual colours in the scene. Metering mode is not the root cause of your issue. Using it as a tool may help you solve the issue once you know what it is but it is not a magic bullet that will fix your shots.

Yes and No.
The "problem" isn't that the camera isn't capturing the scene acuurately, it's that the human eye isn't seeing the scene "correctly" due to over/under exposure. Therefore, the captured image does not match what was seen.
This is most common in low light when the eye cannot gather enough light to "see" all of the colors that are there, but can also happen when the eye "shuts down" due to excess light. ("shutting down" can be either constriction of the iris or bleaching of the cones; usually a combination)

(Although I wouldn't think "closing the aperture" would have been the fix...unless supercelts7 meant using "a smaller aperture number")

[fletch]

Originally Posted by sk66

Yes and No.
The "problem" isn't that the camera isn't capturing the scene acuurately, it's that the human eye isn't seeing the scene "correctly" due to over/under exposure. Therefore, the captured image does not match what was seen.
This is most common in low light when the eye cannot gather enough light to "see" all of the colors that are there, but can also happen when the eye "shuts down" due to excess light. ("shutting down" can be either constriction of the iris or bleaching of the cones; usually a combination)

I wasn't saying exposure wasn't the problem. Just changing the metering mode won't do squat on its own. The camera may still pick exactly they same exposure, it may get it even more wrong. You could achive the same ends my many different means as well, using exposure compensation or manually chaning the settings rather than relying on the camera's meter.

I find its a common miss understanding and see metering mode as one of the most missunderstood aspects of digital photography.

Originally Posted by sk66

(Although I wouldn't think "closing the aperture" would have been the fix...unless supercelts7 meant using "a smaller aperture number")

I can't see how aperture would make any difference either. What may make a difference is more exposure but that would require a larger aperture or longer shutter/higher ISO.