Photo Tip :: White Balance and ISO

Here's two things on cameras most never touch, leaving it on the auto setting and letting it live in the shadows of your camera's functionality. These are things available on point and shoot cameras too, by the way, and can effect even your quick shots. This is how I can try and explain it to you and why it matters and when and if you should mess with it.

ISO

I've talked about ISO a bit before in the beginning glossary of terms post. Here's a bit more of an in-depth explanation because it's that important. ISO is derived from the film days - you know, when you actually had to BUY film and put the roll in and feed it through? Anyone else have to do this? Anyhow, ISO is how sensitive your film is to light and lower number of films were less dense. The term grain comes from this - in higher numbers the grain is higher which means it appears in photos more. In digital, this same idea applies, only instead of film, it's the sensor in your camera that we are measuring sensitivity to light on. A lower ISO is perfect for sunny bright days (100), a middle range ISO is good for shade or cloudiness (320), and a high ISO is good for darker indoor shots (1000). Your camera will have a variety of options - the nicer the camera, usually the more options. I never leave it on auto - your camera will jump around aimlessly with each shot you take trying to gauge so many things and you might end up having a shot taken on a ISO of 500 on a sunny day with an f-stop of 15 meaning you have a grainier and more in focus shot than you ever wanted. This is how I determine what ISO to use.

1 - Where am I? 

I am outside at noon? 100.  Am I in a well lit place with natural light? 320. Is it 7PM in a dimly lit restaurant and I want a photo of that delicious food? 1000+. Maybe the photo above wouldn't be so black if I hadn't set my ISO to 400.

2 - What's my shutter speed?

I generally set my camera at a low f-stop since I think bokeh and blurry backgrounds are the cat's meow. So with my lens set between 1.4 and 2.8 and my ISO set to my first instinct, I look through the camera shutter and depress the shutter button to see what my shutter speed is coming out at. Flashing at 1600 or 1800? I'm outside and have forgotten to change the ISO. Slow at below 15? I need to bump it up a bit. I try and at least get a shutter speed of 15 - I can usually hand hld the camera at that point with little blur. If you are a bit shakier, you might need to go for 20 or above.

3 - Am I tripod-ding the shot or are Jason or I hand holding the camera?

In outfit shots in some of the shady parks, when Jason hand holds the camera, I set it to about 320. If it's me with a tripod, I set it to 200 because I get less grain and no shake from the hand. On a tripod, it's easier to shoot a lower ISO. The shot above was taken with an ISO of 100 because I didn't have shake from a hand on a cloudy day, but it allowed for a nice blur of my movement and the wind.

4 - What am I shooting?

Food at a shutter speed of 15 is fine. But the dogs? Nope. That's a blurry mess of fur. You can see above that Raynor is just a messy blur, but Teemo who was a bit more still trying to chew on the toy, is focused. This was taken with an ISO of 1250 and a shutter speed of 25 - you can start to see how grain affects the photo here too.

Here's a little cheat sheet for you to use of ISO! Feel free to print this little card or bookmark it to look at.

White Balance

White balance is essentially the color temperature of your photos. Ever had something turn out really blue or yellow? Chances are a color in your outfit threw off the color temperature. Different llight sources have different color temperatures, measured in Kelvin, where 1000K is the light of a candle (warm) and 10000K is a shady or rainy day (cool). Warm has red/yellow undertones where as cool has blue/green. This is something you can change in your camera, but here's the truth : I leave it on Auto White Balance. Thre are many settings - from cloudy to sunny to actually setting the temperature yourself if you have a gauge. I do none of this - instead I shoot in camera RAW and edit the color temperature post production. Usually my camera is decent at gauging white balance, and if I forget to set it (it's a pain to set in my opinion) after a sunny shoot and I move indoors, I'm going to mess my shots up more. The photo lords might smite me for this one, but it's how I do it. I'm photographing quickly most of the time, and I can't remember everything.



This above shot is an example of white balance not edited. It's too yellow because it was shot in indoor lighting and the camera gauged it wrong. I should have probably done color correction, but 2009 me was lazy I guess.

To be able to get your white balance edited quickly and easily post production, here's a great tip from my photo professor. Make your own grey card! Go to the hardware store and find the following three paint chips : pure white, pure black, and a middle 50% grey. Google 50% grey swatch on your phone and compare it to that if you need to. When you are taking photos - take a shot holding these three swatches. You can then use these to gauge your color balance and once you get it right, copy and paste those settings onto the rest of your photos.

Here's a screenshot of my camera RAW editing screen with the color temperature circled. I play with those two until the photo turns out right. If you are wearing white or grey - you can use that to gauge too!

I hope this helps, and as always, please ask any questions below.