I want to see light like my camera.

[Kungpao]

I wasn't sure where to post this question. It's a lighting question but it's also hardware.

I think

Story goes, I walk around with my camera and see something that strikes my fancy.

I shoot. I look at my screen. It's not what I'm looking at.

I see these shots in my brain usually in the evening where ambient lighting could be coming anywhere from a street light to neon signs to spot lighting objects however, my camera always corrects to make it different.

The example I've attached was a test shot that I took of a street corner while sitting at a red light. (My wife was driving)
The camera understandably took the ambient light from the red traffic light and used it to brighten up the shot.

While sitting on the drive, I played around with the picture using the camera's manual color correction filters and came up with the second image which was more to what I had visually seen and wanted to capture.

I suppose my question is:
Is there a setting on my camera that will allow me to change the white balance on the fly without having to set up the shot or fix it in post? Am I asking the camera to do too much for me? Should I read books on lighting and white balance to understand it better? lol

It drives me crazy to see some of things in my brain and can't translate that through the camera.

[Tito87]

Your eye sees light in a completely different way from your camera. The dynamic range in which the camera can render a well exposed image is a lot smaller ( That's the reason for HDR photography). Your eyes can adapt almost instantly to changes in light--be they brightness or temperature. Whereas you can't see light the same way as your camera, you can think and visualize how the camera is seeing what you're seeing,and then set your camera so that it can capture the scene the way you want the scene to look.

[Elmo]

One major issue here is MIXED lighting. Florescent from the store. Mercury Vapor (most likely) from the street lights. A gelled whatever from the stop light. Nothing will get get these colors right.

The secret is to learn to see like the camera (your visual powers are more adaptable than a camera and your brain power is better than any computer) not have the camera record what you think you saw.

[Kungpao]

Originally Posted by Elmo

The secret is to learn to see like the camera

Hence the title of my thread lol. I suppose I'm lost as to where to start learning about how my camera sees. Should I pick up some reading material specific to the camera? I think the main thing i'm having the highest difficulty is white balance. I understand exposure enough to know how to adjust for the lighting i'm given. But these types of shots always tend to pick up the wrong color. Which the notion of the camera using the red (in the case of my example) as the ambient light source makes sense to me. I just need to wrap my brain around how to manipulate my camera into different color scenarios.

[Lefteris Katsantonis]

Shoot raw. Don't worry about the colours what you see on the camera screen.
Then you can set any colour temperature you like.
Plus many more advantages of RAW file.
Regards,

[ceremus]

If you have the time to do so before taking the shot, you can switch to live view. You'll see on your LCD exactly what the sensor is picking up and alter your WB accordingly. If it's a quick shot and you don't have time to set that up then I second Lefteris' suggestion. Leave WB in auto and shoot in RAW. Correcting WB in post with a RAW file is pretty straightforward.

[OsmosisStudios]

Oh goody! I get to break out a great example:

Left is the shot as taken by the camera.
Right is the shot as edited by me to look how it looked to my eyes.

HUGE difference. The one big change is white balance, and while it can be used for effect (I could have kept it blue like that, for instance), generally you'll want it to be "neutral", as it is in the example to the right.

The trick: Shoot RAW as mentioned above. These are the exact same photo. I simply changed the white balance in my editor.

[Elmo]

Shoot a lot and look at what was recorded verses what you THINK you saw and you will soon note a pattern. As some have stated shoot RAW and set your color balance in post processing. This helps, but in this case you have distinct areas of distinct different light sources so setting color balance in raw will only correct for one not all.

Again it is something you learn over time. If you start fiddling with adjustment right off, you will never determine a pattern.

[Doug Sundseth]

What Elmo said. After a while, you'll start seeing the real color rather than the color your brain is correcting to.

[ccting]

Hi, noob ting here.
I will try to remove all filters including UV filters from my len.. to see light. Find fog, hash, smoke, + side lighting may be we can see light. I believe some UV filters "filter" them.. You can do a simple experiment. with your UV filter on the len, you go in a dark room, with strong sunset lighting travel though the window. Place your len with uv filter towards to source of light, you can see very strong reflection on the wall from your uv filter.. some lights that you see have been filtered

So, when you see smoke around, go around so that the light is from the side, remove all filters including UV, then try to shoot.. I don't know whether it works or not, but i am sure that the light will hit the smoke particles

May be i should suggest you to read "light science & magic - an introduction ot photographic lighting" by Fil hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua - how to see the light that human don't see.

I am not giving advice, but my opinion.. no harm to try together..i am currently learn to see lights too.. probably it might take 4-5 months to learn, 8 hours per day. it is not an easy topic.. that I currently don't understand.