Intro
I haven't been able to take Niki out on a proper date...sadly the weather and my schedule haven't been optimal for the past couple of days. Saturday is looking good though, sunny and in the 60's. Hopefully by then Niki, Tammy and I will have some fun photos for all of you.
While Niki, Tammy and I haven't gone through the proper motions, we have been getting to know each other's more intimate intricacies in other ways. RAW-R! Ow! Ow!
I'm getting more pleasing results straight out of Niki lately. While it is fun to play around in CaptureNX, I much rather enjoy the actual act of taking the photo and looking at them so much more. Plus, there is a feeling of accomplishment when you manage to nail it all right in-camera. Last week I spent many late nights fussing with contrast and saturation levels - not to mention the time I spent tweaking them in CaptureNX. Then I had what alcoholics call, "a moment of clarity."
And this is where you, the reader, finally can come to understand the reasoning behind this blog's title. Through majority of my photo taking endeavors I had set the White-Balance to "Auto". Hmm...maybe this is why I'm not getting consistent results. "Auto" works lovely for bright, well-lit, uniform, or outdoor situations. But inside with these evil yellow-casting house lights, "Auto" is simply painful to look at.
What is white-balance? White-balance is essentially a black, white, and gray color point that your camera uses in order to provide neutral (read: correct) colors. Now there are times when you don't want neutral colors, and maybe want a little bit of warmth (read: yellow/orange cast) or cool (read: blue cast) over the colors of your image. And sometimes you may even want a crazy color cast like green...this all depends. But nine times out of ten, you generally want the camera to capture the "correct" color from the scene. A lot of this is very subjective. I personally like the nuetral colors, I even desaturate them in-camera as well as during post-processing to get the kind of color I want. Sometimes I play with a yellow cast to emulate the a 70's style photo, it all really depends, but your ability to get consistent white-balance is absolutely key to the ending image.
As I brought up the possibility of correcting the white-balance issue during post-processing, why would I want to fuss over it while taking the photo. The simple answer is, because I want to. Hah. There is a certain panache when you can get things right the first time, and that's with anything. Not only that, it saves me one less step during post-processing, if I even need to do any.
Besides the qualitative factor white-balance provides, it can also affect how your camera meters, sets tone compensation, and saturation - hence the importance of getting that nuetral white-balance from the start. If you eff that up, there's a chance you eff everything else up too. And frankly, post-processing can grow tedious.
Setting White-Balance
Every DSLR, and most other digicams have variable white-balance settings to help combat various light-sources. Niki's got a dedicated button for adjustment right on the top left side. She gives me what I want, when I want. What a girl huh? I'm not much of a fan with the other pre-set options either, but they do offer consistency over the "Auto" setting. What I do is use Niki's custome white-balance setting and take a photo of a white or gray area in the area where I'm taking the photo. The camera reads this image and adjusts the white-balance accordingly in order to compensate. This isn't necessarily the best way to go about it, since it's never a pure white and/or gray, but it sure can beat the hell out of "Auto" most of the time.
Cool Gadget to Help
There are a lot of options to help with this predicament...mostly in the realm of overpriced boards colored in an 18% gray, white, and even black. Some include other test charts for sharpness, focusing...blah blah blah, stuff that is really to technical, even for me. I did however run into this nifty little device called the ExpoDisc. It's really easy and quite simple in design - but more importantly it is consistent. It looks like a super thick lens filter, you snap it in front of the lens and then take a white-balance reading while pointing it at the source of light your scene/object/etc. is being hit by. And not only does it give you a perfect and neutral white-balance, it also serves as an incident meter. This will give you the proper meter reading so you can set your exposure in Manual mode and leave it there - guaranteeing your image will be lighted the same way in every shot as long as it's under the same light source. Why is this helpful? Well for one, a good incident meter runs close to $400!
Is it necessary? Of course not, it just makes the task a lot easier to do. Not to mention it's definitely a chill accessory to own. It's a bit down on my "Want List" but it is one of the more affordable things on that list.
Niki and Her Quirks
I was freaking out about the horror stories involved when upgrading her firmware. Some people claimed it caused focusing issues, the dreaded "Dead Battery Syndrome" aka DBS...well I started freaking out when I was taking some Myspace-esque photos for fun. I noticed that I constantly came out underexposed. Not the little amount I had first encountered with Niki, but the image was incredibly dark. And I thought to myself, if anything, my brown ass would be overexposed. So I wondered what else could be causing it.
Other factors include...bright window behind camera. Could it be the bright light source? But why behind the camera? So I tested the bright light theory by pointing the back of the camera to the light in my room and then taking my photo. And guess what, it underexposed again. I'm sweating bullets now, I thought I messed up Niki. Then I remember an odd accessory in the box. A little cover for the eyepiece. I thoughtm, wtf? I looked it up in the manual and it's used for longer exposures to block out any light that might enter through the eyepiece. EUREKA! It finally made sense to me.
Anyways, I think I'm going to start writing these things regularly. Lemme know if there's anything in particular you want to know more about, and if I can get my hands on it, I'll give you my two-cents.
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