White Balance and Light

I’ve talked before about the advantages of shooting RAW, especially for listing photos.  One of the big advantages is the ability to change the white balance.

White Balance Auto

Most of us don’t want to have to think about the light in which we are shooting.  We move in and out from indoor, outdoor, cloudy, shade and direct sunlight.  We set our camera to White Balance Auto and let the camera make the decision for us.  Sometimes it guesses WRONG.

If you are shooting RAW you can change the White Balance in post processing.  If it guesses wrong and you are shooting in JPG, there is no going back, that white shirt that appears Yellow can’t be made white like it was.  There is no “Bleach” brush to paint on the shirt.  It is possible to tweak it with a little or a lot of work, but why.  Shoot RAW and it isn’t an issue.

Shooting Indoors in Mixed Light

But what do you do when you are shooting a listing and the room has three or more kinds of light?  There are choices to be made.  I’ll give you some tips on what to look for and things you can do when shooting indoors in mixed light in the next post.

Tags: mixed light sources, Shooting RAW, white balance

Re-Imaging Does A Lot But Black is Black

What do I mean by this.  The same way you can blow out details by over exposing there are times when an image, even one shot raw, is so underexposed some of the image detail is black.  Trying to raise details out of black will usually result in a lot of “Noise”.

Lost Detail Creates Noise

If you aren’t familiar with noise it is those speckles of color you get in some of your digital photos.  Some time it is possible to use noise reduction software.  A little noise can be dealt with quite effectively.  But a lot of noise is, a lot of noise.

Here is an example of an image where the camera  light meter was fooled.  It took the reading from the back of the room near the large light source (Large Light Source is technical for Window).

The rest of the room had dark wood floors and limited lighting.  The light that did exist was mixed from several sources.

The end result, an under exposed image.  Even so with Re-Imaging some detail was brought out. However, even with Re-Imaging details can’t be brought out that were not recorded on the camera’s sensor.

The Original Image

As Shot

Re-Imaged

After Being Re-Imaged

Tags: lost details, Noise, Underexposed

Shooting Indoors in Mixed Light

Mixed Light can be difficult to balance

A lot of people are doing their best to save energy and cut down their electric bills.  In the process there have been some repercussions in indoor photography that complicate taking well balanced photos.  Many homes and rooms in those homes have multiple types of light.  It isn’t uncommon to have lamps in a room with incandescent light bulbs, some overhead lighting using Halogen lights on a track, some spot lights and floods recessed in the ceiling in which there can be energy efficient florescent bulbs, incandescent bulbs and halogen bulbs all mixed together.  Throw in a situation where you have florescent tube recessed in the ceiling or over a work area and you have quite the eclectic lighting situation.  What the heck throw in a brightly lite window and you have up to 5 difference sources and types of light.  Is it any wonder a camera with White Balance Auto is left with flipping a coin.

Strobes

The expensive and huge learning curve approach is to flood the room with a burst of light from multiple off camera flashes located to provide the best light and least amount of cast shadows.  But that is a lot of gear to drag around, I know I’ve done it. It also requires a lot of practice and every room of every house is different.

Natural Light

Stick the camera on a tripod and go for the time of day when you can try and expose long enough to bring out the inside without blowing out the outside. Usually just around dusk or early morning. Sometimes it requires shooting different parts of the house at different times of the day. More on this on “What Time of Day to Shoot That House”

Indoor Lighting

Even if you go for the natural light approach, you have to balance the outdoor natural light with the indoor light.  Here is where it can get tricky.  Very tricky, even if you are in control of the white balance which one do you chose.  Here’s a quick and rather inexpensive work around.

Daylight Balanced Bulbs

I carry with me a couple of packs of those small florescent bulbs and floods which are daylight balanced.  This means the light they put out is the same as natural sun light.  I bring along my light bulb suction cup extension pole and before I shot a room I replace the lamp incandescent bulbs and the overhead floods with my daylight balanced bulbs.  I usually also have a flash on the camera or standalone depending on the shot but have them set to very low output to create a soft fill effect with a diffuser on the flash to spread the light.

Now I have a pretty good shot at getting balanced light.  Once the room is shot I put the bulbs back and move on to the next room.

NOTE:  I only have to do this in about 1 in 10 rooms.  Some homes I never need the bulbs.  Others I’m using them in almost every room.  It depends on the light.

But what if I want that Warm Yellow Incandescent Light

Two options here:

1. If you are shooting RAW you can change the white balance in post.  Since the lighting in the shot is balance you can make it all balanced for incandescent and give the shot that warm yellow glow.
2. Instead of daylight balanced bulbs replace the energy efficient spots and floods with plain old incandescents for your shot.  If the home has those cork screw energy saver lights in their lamps put your own bulbs in for the shot.

ISO Auto No No

Low ISO Low Noise

Don’t ever let the camera pick the ISO. Repeat after me “I will never let the camera pick the ISO.”

Second, “I will always set the ISO to the lowest possible setting when taking Marketing photos.”

ISO Auto

ISO Auto is not your friend. Most cameras come with this as the default setting. This is one of the first things you should change. For me unless I’m going out shooting in the dead of night without a tripod the ISO is always set to the lowest the camera can use.

Low ISO Low Noise High ISO High Noise

That heading says it all.  Noise is filler where there is no data.  When the ISO is set high, it allows the shutter to move faster than the light to sensor.  This means there are gaps in the data being captured for the image.  When you send these images in to be ReImaged those gaps will be enhanced as well as the good data.

There are techniques and filters that can be applied to help remove some noise by finding good pixels around the missing ones it uses mathematics to pick what the missing pixels probably were and puts one in the missing spot that is like the good ones next to it.

If there are a bunch of missing pixels all clustered together there isn’t much that can be done.

ReImaging works best with low ISO

You will have to expose longer, possible use a tripod (you should be doing this anyway) and slow down the shutter speed to allow the data to be captured.  This will produce the best results.  Maybe not right out of the camera, because there is a photo lab in your camera, but if the data is in the file we can dig deep, find it and bring it out.  This is what ReImaging is all about.

Shooting RAW

When Shooting RAW

Shoot RAW Leaves Your Cooking Options Open

When shooting RAW all the data from the shot the sensor collected is saved.  When you save in JPG or JPEG there is “clipping” going on to compress the file size so it is smaller.  This compression process picks the data by a mathematical algorithm to decided what data to keep and what to discard.

Among photographers there is an ongoing discussion about the advantages or lack there of of shooting Raw vs JPG.  One of the best I’ve run across is Raw vs JPEG.  But when it comes to creating an exceptional listing image.  There is nothing that can replace the detail garnered from a RAW image file.

While RAW image files are large they provide the best results for HDR processing.  They also allow the greatest flexibility in post processing.  White balance, color settings, just about anything you can think of can be changed (with the exception of focus) and that can be improved when shooting RAW.

If you are only a casual photographer and not interesting in spending time post processing your images, shooting RAW probably isn’t for you.  But if you want maximum ability to post process your images, then RAW is the way to go.

For me, I don’t like having to go back and reshoot a room because I under exposed it in the camera.  When shooting RAW it isn’t an issue.

Tags: RAW Files, Shooting RAW