Mother Nature and White Balance

disjecta

disjecta

Lucky Duck
I just got back from a trip to the Squamish area of Canada and had a ball filming an abundance of bald eagles.

I've generally been using the preset white balance on my camera for morning and evening shots, tweaking in post to get the right balance. For this shoot, I manually white-balanced exclusively.

Let's use the example of sunrise. White-balancing produces some very odd colors when mixing a scene with morning shadow and morning sun. If you white-balance in the shade, everything that is in the actual shade looks exactly like it's supposed to but if you catch something in your frame that's lit by the sun, that portion is almost totally orange. The snow at the top of some mountains, just as the sun was rising gave off an unnatural yellow hue, while everything else looked right.

Conversely, if you place your white card in a sunspot and white-balance from that, everything lit by the sun looks correct but things in the shade are really blue.

As the day progresses, these problems disappear because everything is more evenly lit. I had similar problems in the evening but not to such an exent.

The preset daylight white balance on the camera seems to yield a better overall balance for mixed light morning shots but there has to be a more efficient way of making this work.

Has anyone encountered these problems and come up with a compromise/solution?

Thanks...
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

Mm interesting. I've never actually shot outside at either of these hours so I cannot provide any real feedback in that regard. Thanks for posting this thoug... it's something I'm going to need to deal with soon enough.

I had similar trouble shooting in the mountains with snow the other day. I went out and shot some footage of the family cutting a christmas tree (yes I live in montana where nearly anything is legal) and the white balance would cause the snow to change hue due to the shadows vs sun. It wasn't too extreme as it was an overcast day and the lighting was scattered about fairly well but it certainly pops up every now and then.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

I suspect what you're seeing is the difference in color temperature between direct sunlight and skylight.

Skylight is the illumination from above during the day that is not cast directly from the sun. 25% of all solar radiation is scattered by the upper atmosphere, of which 66% makes its way to the earth as diffuse sky radiation...or skylight. The color temperature of skylight begins at about 8000K and can extend as high as 30,000K due to the prefferential difraction of blue spectra caused by the molecules in the upper atmosphere.

This is also what makes the sky blue, it has nothing to do with the ocean (my parents lied to me).

Sunlight actually measures around 5,400K on average, and skylight measures about 9500K. DAYLIGHT, the standard we use in balancing our cameras is actually the combination of sunlight and skylight on an average day...5600K. Often times, correct daylight can be much higher then 5600K...easily up to 6500K and higher on cloudy days.

What you're seeing in your early morning experiences are the two extremes of light. As the morning light refracts around the earth, you're getting sunlight that is much warmer then 5400K...probably closer to 4500K, but as this light is highly directional...you're seeing the color temperature of skylight in the shadows...not the spill of daylight, leading to blue shadows and orange light.

My compormise would be to nix as much of the shadows as possible and get as much of the magic light as possible on camera.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

J_Barnes, I was actually hoping you would answer this post, you seem to know a lot about the technical aspect of light. Anyway, you have confirmed what I needed to know.

Thanks for you time.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

.. in general our eyes judge white at daylight color tempuratures, generally if im shooting in the morning i do the same, and leave it at the preset 56k, that way the camera will pretty much see and interpret colors the same way my eyes are.. if its orange...its orange.. if its bluish.. its bluish.. it creates an interesting mix of colors for sure , but imho theres nothing wrong with mixing color temps as long as its done correctly.. and ive never looked at a sunset/rise scene and thought is was ugly cause i wasnt all the same color. i know what your saying though.. it makes it hard to deal with things being the color you want them to be because nothing is really shown in true "white" light at the time.. its either too this or too that.. i tend to shoot stuff only in the sun, and roll off or compress or forget about the shadowed stuff. the few times i shoot in the shadows, i try to fill the shot with shadow.. a pain. .. ive shot alot at magic hour, and have just settled for a reddish look of the sunlit areas at best , and CCd the shadows to a reasonable color when needed, or crushed them till they dropped most of their color :-/
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

I had this situation in Catholic Church at a wedding. There was light coming from all over the place, with so many different shades. Light through glass doors, sky lights, and stained glass. It has been a headache trying to balance it all in post. But iam almost there.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

When I shoot morning or evening shot, most of the time I prefer to use the camera with a white balance to 5600° k, liked a film will do and filtered to advantage the part I prefer to have as close to reality, the shade or direct light.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

Haven't had any of these situations...yet.

And, whenever I finally do, the scene will most likely include people or some other subject rather than the scenery.

So...I'd put a card at the subject and white balance there, letting the rest of the image take care of itself. :)

Hmmmm...now I wish Germany hadn't entered into the always-grey season, so I could try it out...

Dan
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

[quote author=J_Barnes link=board=Events;num=1101753774;start=0#2 date=11/29/04 at 11:55:42]

due to the prefferential difraction of blue spectra caused by the molecules.[/quote]
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

One of the points of shooting at "magic hour" is that you want the warm light, not white light. If you color correct the warm light to be white, you lose the effect.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

[quote author=Shadow link=board=Events;num=1101753774;start=0#7 date=11/29/04 at 15:45:27]When I shoot morning or evening shot, most of the time I prefer to use the camera with a white balance to 5600° k, liked a film will do and filtered to advantage the part I prefer to have as close to reality, the shade or direct light.[/quote]
Precisely what I'd do. Generally speaking (not all the time), at sunrise/sunset you will have a reverse palette than during the day - closer objects will appear bluish because they will more likely reflect the diffused sky light, while objects farther away will more likely be illuminated by the directional sun light.

If you try manual white balance either way (skylight or sunlight), the difference between the warm and cool tones will probably be too wide to be pleasing to the eye. In my opinion, it's much better to use the daylight preset 5.6K. Both blue and orange colors will be closer to the average, and you will get more pleasing effect. You can, however, use graduated warming/cooling filters to suppress colors you don't want, and give the picture more balanced look.

Jerry
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

Here's an idea;

Instead of WB in direct sunlight and instead of WB in direct shade...

Can we WB using BOUNCED SUNLIGHT into a SHADY AREA?

i.e. your standing in the shade just out of reach of the sun beams and you use foamcore to counce the direct sunlight into your WB?

Worth a try?
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

I'd expect that you'd overpower the skylight illuminating the shade, rendering a WB that is again balanced for the sunlight. (also, the sun is rising as you're trying to figure this out, hurry up or you'll miss the magic!)

It would be nice if we could sample the direct sun in a situation like this and sample the shade and have the camera average the two into a single white balance, but even that still wouldn't lend a perfect picture.

Color temperature is different from electronic white balance in that it can change only along one axis. Electronic white balance is actually two adjustments B-Y and R-Y.

Because of this, there is still a possability that the average between two white balances could result in a balance that is different from the average in color temperatures.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

[quote author=J_Barnes link=board=Events;num=1101753774;start=0#13 date=11/30/04 at 11:40:48]It would be nice if we could sample the direct sun in a situation like this and sample the shade and have the camera average the two into a single white balance, but even that still wouldn't lend a perfect picture.
[/quote]
maybe stick your white card right on the border of shade/sunlight, zoom in, then crank the focus ring until the image is as blurred as possible - then white balance? it may give enough mix to sort of simulate this average.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

This is what I heard as well- about finding the inbetween range and doing the white balance there if you want to equalize it.

Usually in film, we shoot to use the golden hour's light.

Also, one thing that you could try doing is: using a warm graduated filter in reversee (a weak density so as not to lose too much light) and warm up the shadow areas... dunno, never tried it or heard how well it works.

Nice to hear from you again! Glad to hear you had a great shoot/time.

CHEERS ;D.
 
Re: Mother Nature and White Balance

You could always get a color meter and do some experimenting. Then you would know exactly what you are going to get. I think it is important to previsualize your final result instead of trying to do a lot of post work.

Michael Smith
 
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