White balance ethics

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't been able to sleep at night. Going to bed with a guilty conscience that is; knowing I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy our newsprint reproduction manager. Here's my problem:

With film colors reproduce exactly as they appear in real life. With digital you can alter the colors your camera outputs by setting the white balance to different temperatures. What's the best way to reproduce accurate colors? Ethically you can't brighten up a photo and saturate the colors to make the scene look better (not in journalism anyway). My job is to reproduce that one would have seen if they had been there themselves. National Geographic, for instance, only allows their photographers to alter colors slightly (ie, contrast and color correction)... but if you dont make your skin tones to the right CMYK numbers you get hounded by the prepress department to do so to make the paper more beautiful. What's a guy to do? If a guy's standing under a blue light, they look blue... and therefore should be printed as blue in the paper.

Can you just set a neutral white balance temperature in one situation (say a flash bounced off the roof of an all white room) and use that in all instances to make your CCD react to color like film or does the CCD see light differently than film. Help me out here, please.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

ib1yysguy said:

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't
been able to sleep at night. Going to bed with a guilty conscience
that is; knowing I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy
our newsprint reproduction manager. Here's my problem:

With film colors reproduce exactly as they appear in real life.
With digital you can alter the colors your camera outputs by
setting the white balance to different temperatures. What's the
best way to reproduce accurate colors? Ethically you can't brighten
up a photo and saturate the colors to make the scene look better
(not in journalism anyway). My job is to reproduce that one would
have seen if they had been there themselves. National Geographic,
for instance, only allows their photographers to alter colors
slightly (ie, contrast and color correction)... but if you dont
make your skin tones to the right CMYK numbers you get hounded by
the prepress department to do so to make the paper more beautiful.
What's a guy to do? If a guy's standing under a blue light, they
look blue... and therefore should be printed as blue in the paper.

Can you just set a neutral white balance temperature in one
situation (say a flash bounced off the roof of an all white room)
and use that in all instances to make your CCD react to color like
film or does the CCD see light differently than film. Help me out
here, please.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Click to expand...

I think you're worrying excessively about nothing. Film does NOT reproduce color exactly as it was in the original. Pint film is always color corrected for white balance as part of the printing process. Always. The machines at the labs do it automatically, and the techs can manually do it too since the machines are not always correct in their 'corrections'. Slide film shows the exact color temperature of the light at the original scene, but this is often not what the human eye saw since our brian has built in white balancing.

You can't use one white balance setting for all situations to simulate film. Remeber, film is printed and white balanced on a frame by frame basis; you just don't see that process unless you do your own printing. so go ahead and white balance each frame.....
--
Chris Crawford

http://www.crawfordandkline.com

Christopher Crawford said:

I think you're worrying excessively about nothing. Film does NOT
reproduce color exactly as it was in the original. Pint film is
always color corrected for white balance as part of the printing
process. Always. The machines at the labs do it automatically,
and the techs can manually do it too since the machines are not
always correct in their 'corrections'. Slide film shows the
exact color temperature of the light at the original scene, but
this is often not what the human eye saw since our brian has built
in white balancing.

You can't use one white balance setting for all situations to
simulate film. Remeber, film is printed and white balanced on a
frame by frame basis; you just don't see that process unless you do
your own printing. so go ahead and white balance each frame.....
--
Chris Crawford

http://www.crawfordandkline.com

Click to expand...

My spelling sucks.... I meant our BRAINS have built in white balancing, and the pint film I referred to is actually PRINT film!
--
Chris Crawford

http://www.crawfordandkline.com

ib1yysguy said:

Can you just set a neutral white balance temperature in one
situation (say a flash bounced off the roof of an all white room)
and use that in all instances to make your CCD react to color like
film or does the CCD see light differently than film. Help me out
here, please.
--
Al

Click to expand...

I will do my meager best: The CCD sees light a bit differently in that the white balance is interpreted after the image is taken. With film you have to know ahead of time what the white balance will be and then load the appropriate film (or put on the appropriate filter) before shooting. The reason is that the chemistry of the film is pre-programmed to interpret color in a particular way - just like a custom white balance. The CCD (or CMOS device) simply records data in RGB mode. You can mix them later any way you want - but only in RAW mode.

Here is where it starts to get complicated. When shooting in RAW mode, you get to determine the white balance after the fact. Jpeg and Tiff modes post process the color in-camera and provide you with a file that is essentially like a piece of film, but with a key difference. This difference is the Auto White Balance function that happens when shooting in other than RAW mode. (let's not confuse things by talking about all the possible modes)

My guess is that you are typically shooting in one of the Jpeg or Tiff modes, perhaps even in full auto program mode. If you are shoting Jpeg or Tiff mode the camera will choose the brightest spot in the scene and assume that this must be white (Auto White Balance). It will then post process your image in-camera using that assumption. This is essentially setting a custom white balance for each picture, except that you have no control over what it thinks white is.

For your situation, as a photo journalist, I assume that you don't want to be setting white balance in each situation. This time consuming process could cause you to miss a critical shot. The only hope I see for you is to shoot in RAW mode, perhaps blow one picture by shooting a white card in that lighting to make your color balance job easier later. However, each time your lighting changes, you should shoot another white card. The beauty of digital is that shooting the white card can be done either before, during or after the key shots you wanted.

I hope this is helpful. In addition, before I get bombarded with responses, you can modify the white balance of film or Jpegs or Tiffs after they have been auto-white balanced. I believe the job is much more difficult than using RAW mode to start with because the data has been transformed through a formula and we don't know the precise reverse of that formula. Oh yes, and RAW mode usually yields better quality results, so for those times when you need to crop a great deal (enlarging a small portion of the image to get your shot) you have the best chance of getting a useful image.

Best regards,
Jonathan
--
It's all good, but some stuff is better.

Christopher Crawford said:

Christopher Crawford said:

I think you're worrying excessively about nothing. Film does NOT
reproduce color exactly as it was in the original. Pint film is
always color corrected for white balance as part of the printing
process. Always> >

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Oddly enough, Christopher's response is also correct. The film is pre-set to respond to a particular color spectrum (Tungsten, Infrared or Daylight) and then, because it is a fixed transformation, we have to color correct later to get a more accurate rendition. This does not alter the fact that the film is pre-programmed to respond a certain way to the exposures.

In print negatives there are additional reasons for the color correction before printing (the built in color filter of the film substrate). Slide film is more of a straight forward process, but it is again a fixed transformation and will need later correction to get your neutral skin tones. Slide film shot at sunset will have a lot more red than when shot at noon for instance, due to the filtering effect of the atmosphere.

Best regards,
Jonathan
--
It's all good, but some stuff is better.

and go into the MINISTRY.

ib1yysguy said:

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't
been able to sleep at night. Going to bed with a guilty conscience
that is; knowing I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy
our newsprint reproduction manager. Here's my problem:

With film colors reproduce exactly as they appear in real life.
With digital you can alter the colors your camera outputs by
setting the white balance to different temperatures. What's the
best way to reproduce accurate colors? Ethically you can't brighten
up a photo and saturate the colors to make the scene look better
(not in journalism anyway). My job is to reproduce that one would
have seen if they had been there themselves. National Geographic,
for instance, only allows their photographers to alter colors
slightly (ie, contrast and color correction)... but if you dont
make your skin tones to the right CMYK numbers you get hounded by
the prepress department to do so to make the paper more beautiful.
What's a guy to do? If a guy's standing under a blue light, they
look blue... and therefore should be printed as blue in the paper.

Can you just set a neutral white balance temperature in one
situation (say a flash bounced off the roof of an all white room)
and use that in all instances to make your CCD react to color like
film or does the CCD see light differently than film. Help me out
here, please.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Click to expand...

--
Only the Dead have seen the end of War....PLATO

The guy under a blue light may look blue in print if you don't compensate, but to the observer's eyes, he will have normal coloring. Our brains compensate and make those adjustments automatically.

The camera has to be told to do that, or it has to been done via editing. You're not deceiving anyone.
Sleep well.
--
Please visit me at:
http://www.caughtintimephotography.com

What film camera did you have that recorded colors correctly all the time ?

I think what you meant to say was

When i was shooting film and had a lab process my film they always fixed all my mistakes in not using the right film or filter and corrected the colors for me.

Film has exactly the same problems that is why there are daylight balanced films (standard) and film balanced for tungsten as well as other lighting situations and then there are filters to fix color issues. These filters as well as the need for different color balanced films have been eliminated by white balance.

--
Michael Salzlechner
StarZen Digital Imaging
http://www.starzen.com/imaging

Al -
I think you raise a legitimate issue.

It's similar to the growing ethic in the wildlife photographer's realm: if an animal is shot in captivity, the photo should not be presented as if it were in the wild.

In landscape photography particularly (where there are no skin tones or other universal references), it's possible to alter the white balance significantly, to meet your artistic goals, but thereby deviate signifcantly from reality -- without most people realizing it's fiction. For instance, in this shot:



I really like it with the saturation bumped up a bit -- but I know it's colored more than I saw at the time -- so is it fair to present it without disclaimer?

Granted, this is not as extreme as digitally moving a pyramid, and it's complicated to say what the "correct" or most accurate WB is (given the brain/perception issues). But a gross distortion of WB should not be presented as an accurate portrayal.
There's my own opinion
Forester

In a journalistic point of view, I suppose the line of demarcation is:

Is this an accurate representation of the scene?

The process is not important, the film, the pixels, the paper, the print- forget the journey.

p

--
http://www.paulmbowers.com

My first post was an effort to describe the differences between film and ccd white balance in a basic way. Now we get to the pesky ethical part.

All of the posters who brought up the issue of the human peceptive system and it's unconscious color correction have struck at the heart of the dilemma. To ease your conscience further, I offer this: Even if you provide a "perfectly" accurate rendition of the scene as it existed, the print medium is still performing sleight-of-hand in order to fool your eyes into seeing colors. Do those dithered CMYK or RGB dots really represent the scene as your eye saw it? If it did, we would not have to do color correction at all, would we? You see, the medium requires that we use as many tricks as we have in order to reproduce the EXPERIENCE of the original scene as best we can.

You do raise a good issue about photojournalistic integrity, should we attempt to "pretty-up" a scene? Again, if perfectly accurate rendition distracts from the point of the picture, it is actually less accurate.

Best regards,
Jonathan
--
It's all good, but some stuff is better.

Not only do great minds think alike, they also post at nearly the same time.

Best regards,
Jonathan

Paul M Bowers said:

In a journalistic point of view, I suppose the line of demarcation is:

Is this an accurate representation of the scene?

The process is not important, the film, the pixels, the paper, the
print- forget the journey.

p

--
http://www.paulmbowers.com

Click to expand...

--
It's all good, but some stuff is better.

............... prepress are, well it’s still Christmas so I'll be kind. They'll change the pics anyway. Or only use them in B&W and then gripe.

I always use one WB, on the D1x that’s Flash = to 6,500K and the recognised film daylight balance, some will advocate 5,500K and that’s fine too.

Except for available light in factories and showrooms etc, I’ll stick to the same WB setting.

Incidentally as you work directly with prepress, they should make a profile for your files and use that to balance for their output.

ib1yysguy said:

Ever since I've started shooting digital for my nespaper I havn't
been able to sleep at night.

Click to expand...

How do journalists shooting black and white feel? B&W does not represent the scene as it was. I think worrying excessively about altering a photo is futile unless you are shooting forensic work. Almost all photos are altered in some way.

David Goerndt

David Goerndt said:

How do journalists shooting black and white feel? B&W does not
represent the scene as it was. I think worrying excessively about
altering a photo is futile unless you are shooting forensic work.
Almost all photos are altered in some way.

Click to expand...

I'll disagree here, respectfully, of course.

B/W is a limitation of the process, and I think we'd all agree that a color image is closer to being at the actual scene than B/W, unless of course you are a dog.

I DO worry about the type of media coverage we get, and was buoyed by the spirit of the original post.

Here is the crux of the matter. For the first time in history, no longer is a photographic image a reasonable resource for determining truth.

It was always a bit of a stretch, and the term "point of view" is not merely a cliche. However, it is now EXTREMELY EASY to alter an image, far easier than it has ever been, and with far more believeable results. Indeed, it has become accepted workflow to alter images far further than simple dodging, burning and lens selection. We had a case here in CA during the Govenor's race where one candidate's party proffered an image of the incumbent accepting a campaign check in the Govenor's office, a violation of state law. The image was not as purported, but I'm sure cost the incumbent votes anyway.

On Canon's site for the 1Ds, a big deal is made of the system Canon has created to assure the production of verifiable original, unaltered images for forensic applications. If I ruled the world, I'd require reporting agencies and news organizations to use the system. While I'm sure it's defeatable, it's all we've got to try and assure quality and truth in media, a pipedream at best.

Remember, I'm a marketing photographer. It's my job to create images that help people sell things, and I have many tricks with which to deceive catalog customers into believing that a particular item is something they not only want , but elevate it to something they need .

I guess it makes me cynical, no?

p

--
http://www.paulmbowers.com

Do National Geo photogrprhers only use daylight balanced film? Do they use filters? Do they only use EPN slide film in order to get the most accurate color reproduction? Do newspaper photographers not burn & dodge there images, sometimes heavily? Do they use flash?

Regards,
Bern Caughey

I suggest black, brown, red and yellow balance to go along with the white balance

Paul M Bowers said:

On Canon's site for the 1Ds, a big deal is made of the system Canon
has created to assure the production of verifiable original,
unaltered images for forensic applications. If I ruled the world,
I'd require reporting agencies and news organizations to use the
system. While I'm sure it's defeatable, it's all we've got to try
and assure quality and truth in media, a pipedream at best.

Click to expand...

well .... and me, being a photographer and not a photojournalist who should be bound to objectivity - even without altering canon's image i will be able to present the same matter at hand in a number of different ways. each of them, with a supporting story will contradict the other.

so where does the white balance come in ?

take a picture and try to show what you have seen. if that's your intent. make whatever corrections necessary, if it helps you to stick close to the truth.

i however will show you not what i have seen ... but what i want you to see - and not being a photojournalist i feel perfectly fine about it.

by the way : is it ethical to use yellow-blue polarizer ? or a red filter ? what happens if i leave something out of focus and people won't see it at all ? even worse : i could frame it out

so i would not worry about white balance extensively . that is my view, of course ...

cheers

veniamin kostitsin
http://www.digitalimage.at/

Bern Caughey said:

Do National Geo photogrprhers only use daylight balanced film? Do
they use filters? Do they only use EPN slide film in order to get
the most accurate color reproduction? Do newspaper photographers
not burn & dodge there images, sometimes heavily? Do they use flash?

Click to expand...

Sure they do! But we were discussion journalisim, the line of which is pretty blurry. Yes, filters, dodge, burn, flash etc, but I believe in a news environment these tools are used to more accurately render the scene, to create an OBJECTIVE window to the event or person. Think primary resource, think historical documentation.

I know, I know, I was born before MTV. Long before. But it is far too easy to lie with images than ever before.

I'm just an old fart.

BUT! Do you believe it's ethically OK to simply invent images? I think we'd all agree that falsification of an event is unethical. If I created an image of W and Saddam smoking a hookah together, would that still qualify as journalisim? If W and Saddam did actually meet, would it be ethical for me to use PS to decrease their proximity to make them look more friendly? To clone out distracting bodyguards? If W was showing signs of ebola on his face, would it be ethical to retouch him? If not, would it be ethical to add ebola to his face if we knew it was there, but had extensive makeup to cover it?

Where are we going to go with this? Who is going to draw the line?

p
--
http://www.paulmbowers.com

Forget cloning, filters, etc.
I do believe the original post refered to white balance....
--
Please visit me at:
http://www.caughtintimephotography.com