White balance ethics

Al,

Thanks for your reply. You're right about the pyramid debacle being old news. They were contrite, but only after they were caught.

You're right about having to draw your own boundaries, but you've got to choose your fights wisely. I'd hate to see you go to the mat over what I feel is maybe not much more than a misunderstanding of purposes. This kind of relates to my circulation question. I've worked for a mid-size paper running their commercial photography subsidiary and I've also worked for a mid-size TV station, both as a video journalist (back then it was film) and as a director of both the 6:00 and 11:00 news broadcast. I hung around the paper's PJ's and still maintain a friendship with some. We have chewed the fat occasionally about the digital revolution. Although your concern has not come up directly, I don't think it's a high priority with my buddies, and I think those in mid to large markets would be preoccupied with other concerns.

I asked about your years in the field because I suspected it wasn't long. I sincerely hope you keep your idealism. My 25 year's experience before changing professions indicate there may be more serious ethical questions you will have to face.

I'm in no way siding with the "suits", but newspapers are in serious trouble as the media market becomes more and more fragmented by technology. They have to concern themselves with keeping the doors open so you can pursue your profession, and being able to see things a little from their perspective will ultimately serve you well. There a far more folks out there that want to be PJ's than there are positions available, all the way up and down the market. Consider yourself lucky to be in the field no matter what your current level is. Choose your battles wisely. There are a hundred aspiring PJ's out there who'd love the opportunity to have your job.

Thank you for taking my comments and questions in the spirit in which they were intended and best of luck in your pursuits.

Doug

cropping, where to stand, what to leave in, what to leave out.
The camera might not lie, but photographers tell some whoppers!

If you shoot daylight film/WB under flourescents, they you are presenting a false image, by not matching the film/WB to the light.

So to be "ethical" you would need a camera with a 35 mm lens, shooting EPN (no Velvia and no 800 speed neg film), and hold the camera at the height of the average person who reads the paper.
Sounds like a job my friend once had as an evidence photographer at the LAPD.

I have not seen National Geographic in years, why do people think it the last word in photographic/editorial integrity? Is it because of it's quasi-scholarly image or what? They sure don't have any business ethics, if you look at the rights grab they made with the CDs they put out.

--
Mike D

'The pain goes away on payday' - Larry Fine

My eyes really don't perceive people under flourescent light as green--what I see is an emphasis and contrast of red and how unnatural people look under flourescent light. This is an optical phenomena.

But I suspect some folks might see a greenish tint because of the way the color spectrum works. How we perceive color is to some degree a biological fact, but is also a cultural conditioning. In some cultures a color is not a color at all but is a signifier, so I suspect that presenting color inaccurately might get someone confused.

So we have the issue of white balance being crucial.

Digital photography is a sampling. Our brain fills in what isn't really there (gestalt effect). The techhead solution to this is more pixels, but that won't solve this problem. A low resolution or high resolution image still requires that white balance be critical to how we present and perceive the image. Also consider the empathetic response to colors and we understand how crucial white balance can be.

And it can be manipulated.

So taking a picture is much like telling (and writing down) a story. The story teller eventually gets a reputation as being a journalist, prose writer, fiction writer, or plain (entertaining)liar. Those who read a lot will be able to tell the difference. The human imagination is the biggest variable. An image can stimulate the imagination, provoke thought, and convey the integrity of the moment without being accurate. Think about how much controversy there has been about the first images of man on the moon -- The question mark about how a flag can be waving with no wind, etc. These are things that must be explained in context (text).

Photographs have never told the truth, really. Civil war photographers were known to re-arrange corpses for visual effect or so that they would be lighted better. The end result was that we saw a lot of dead human beings presented in some creative ways. Most viewers understood war as horrible, but had a kind of fascination with these images. As viewers we are always drawn to the dramatic and the vibrant. There is not much in the print media that is really accurate, if we really think about it. And that's why the ethics are as much a responsibility of the viewer as the photographer.

So in answer to your question about the ethics of white balance. It's a two way street. The viewer must also have ethics. If a journalist holds the ethic of accuracy, then they must strive in every way to meet that ethic. So yours is a very good question and has obviously brought about a lot of thought and comment. And that's what good journalism does.

And I think your concern about this business of white balance in relation to your goals is an admirable one.

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...

Paul M Bowers said:

But the real clue to my point is in the last line about "convey the
feeling" of the situation,

THE FEELING? THE FEELING? Journalisim is not supposed to be about
FEELINGS, it's supposed to be about FACTS and the accurate
representation thereof. One individual's FEELINGS about an event
may be very different than anothers FEELINGS about the same event.
A great example of this would be a anti-abortion rally. One
photographer who is "pro choice" might see the rally as an affront
to his/her legal rights, and another advance for a fascist state
trying to waylay the constitution for religious reasons. Another
photographer who is a deacon at his/her local Catholic parish will
likely FEEL very different about the very same rally.

Without a dedication to truth and FACTS, that is, an ethical
obligation , these events would be strongly influenced by the
FEELINGS of the reporter, and not necessarily convey the objective
facts of the event. The objective representation of these facts
require a dedication to craft that will manifest itself in
deliberate actions like accurate focus, reasonable focal lengths to
represent reasonable scale and size/proximity relationships, and
lighting that attempts to accurately record the scene without
improper emotional "coloring".

I'll grant you, this thread has changed direction a little, but I
like to think it has evolved to a very interesting discussion.

Thanks to everyone participating, and thanks to ib1yysguy for
opening this Pandora's box.

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

Click to expand...

You bring up some valid points, however I think you are confusing a few things. PJ is not now nor probably ever been about just the facts. In an ideal world Journalisim would be a straight delivery of facts with no editorial bais or influence. Ours is not an ideal world. I will not get into a long discussion about the ethics of Journalisim, suffice it to say just reporting the facts does not sell newspapers. If all of the photos in the paper were just there to convey information then everything would be shot with a normal lens and reprinted without cropping. This is not the case, wide angle and telephoto lens are use very often. The exposure is adjusted to bring out detail that the human eye could not pick up. We see very dramatic photos in the news all of the time. Believe or not photos are not the holy grail of truth. They are in the paper to sell copies. Why else would they have switched to printing in color if not to make the product more attractive. Black and White would convey the truth just as well.

You may not agree with my choice of the word feeling, however it is clear that new photsgraphy is not just about the facts. It is about the emotions, the drama and the impact.

ib1yysguy said:

ib1yysguy said:

Again, if perfectly accurate
rendition distracts from the point of the picture, it is actually
less accurate.

Click to expand...

A nice concept, but wrong. I dont think that reproducing the scene
perfectly is necessary. Altering the scene to make it something
that it's not, however, is unethical.

Making the sky more orange than it actually is at sunset may look
pretty but it's not the reality of the situation. Making a sky
darker blue in the daytime beacuse your camera washes out the sky's
highlights is acceptable beacuse that's essentailly what you would
have seen had you been there yourself.

Click to expand...

So...as a journalist, you believe that presenting under or overexposed photos is unethical?? I disagree.

What do you do when you photographing a person against a sunset? do you can silloette the person, use fill flash, or overexpose the sky?. Which one of these is not unethical by your definition? None reflect the reality you see with your eye...where you can clearly see the details of the back-light subject and the sunset's colors.

Don't sell the public short. They didn't think newspapers were accurate when it was black & white.

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...

People aren't as smart as you give them credit for.

Besides, when you print in black and white, it is understood that the situation that the image was derived from wasn't black & white also. In this case, they know the image has been manipulated by subtracting the color value from it.

With color it is a different story. Changing someone's skin tones may or may not be noticed by Joe Schmoe paper consumer as a digital after-the-fact manipulation. In that case it is misleading and cannot be called "journalism".

--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

None of your examples are unethical because they dont "add" something to the photo that misleads the viewer into thinking something other than what the reality of the situation presents.

Making the sky green, for instance, with the wrong wb. setting. Or making a sunset more orange than it actually is. That's chaning the reality. Sillouhetting someone against a bright background is taking the reality and and simplifying it by taking it to two extremes. A highlight and a shadow. You aren't changing the facts, you are just presenting them differently.

It could be argued that overexposing the sky outdoors to the point where it appears white in relation to everything else is unethical. Someone may see the image and assume it was overcast that day when in fact the skys were sunny blue.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

National Geographic has credibility with photographers because photographers have been trained to trust things that come in yellow boxes.

James Long said:

National Geographic has credibility with photographers because
photographers have been trained to trust things that come in yellow
boxes.

Click to expand...

ROFL!
--
Mike D

'The pain goes away on payday' - Larry Fine

James Long said:

National Geographic has credibility with photographers because
photographers have been trained to trust things that come in yellow
boxes.

Click to expand...

Oh jeez. I've not used anything from a yellow box since the 80's when I discovered the green box, didn't bother with yellow again after that other than when they hired me to test some of their "new" cr@p. I think a lot of othe photographers would agree. NG has been yellow a long time and known for it's great images, recent moves have put them on less stable ground. They've never paid well for photos, either.

Let me get this straight. The reporters and editors report their OPINIONS as news. All the news outlets color poll results either by how they frame the questions or by push polling. Then call the results news. And you're loosing sleep over white balance adjustments being dishonest?

WDM said:

Let me get this straight. The reporters and editors report their
OPINIONS as news. All the news outlets color poll results either by
how they frame the questions or by push polling. Then call the
results news. And you're loosing sleep over white balance
adjustments being dishonest?

Click to expand...

YES HE IS!

And I'm glad at least someone does. I'll agree it's like trying to hold back the river, but I'm glad to see it's even considered now and then.

It's also true that the primary reason news organizations exist is to sell advertising. Nothing more and nothing less. And I further think it important to teach our children that fact. There is no more reasonable news source on which one can base an opinion. Thanks, 60 Minutes, the "News Magazine".

OK. I think I'm off thread now. Oops.

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

So, wouldn´t setting the WB to "daylight" solve your "problem"?

Juuso

ib1yysguy said:

Third, what I meant by film reading colors correctly was that the
silver crystals would read "consistantly" (i suppose thats a better
word for it). If your in the daylight it would read about right.
That's what it's balanced for. If your inside it would read yellow
or green. That color that the crystals are reading is in fact the
actual color of the light. Your eyes dont precieve it as well as
the film but you can still tell if you try. Walk out side on a dark
night and look into a brightly lit shop window. You'll notice that
it looks more green than normal.

Anyway, I'm just looking for consistancy with my digital images.
Making a white shirt look white isn't always right. If your
standing next to a lamp that white shirt is going to look yellow to
the eye but when you set your camera to tunsten wb. it will make it
read artifically white.
--
Al
Set low goals and you'll never be disapointed.

Click to expand...

ib1yysguy said:

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.

Click to expand...

If we had more ethical news-related people like you, we wouldn't have those outrageously hyped newscast reports we see on tv. Keep up the ethics as it makes a better photographer (In my opinion). Unfortunately, I don't see the practice of ethics on the news these days.

--
http://pub103.ezboard.com/bthedigitaldinguscommunity

I feel for you but see no reason why you should worry about these things. You are misrepresenting only as much as any other photographer ever has.

The job of a photographer is to bring home images of events, situations, places and things. You brain has the ability to see colors as they really are or to imagine them neutral. The digital camera is doing the same thing. The people in the press room simply need to be told that what you got is as good as it gets! Film was a lot worse and the chances were that they would have nothing if it was not for the guy doing the color correcting. I do not see a problem with color or image tone correcting as long as the content is not changed.

If it really bothers you to feel this as unreasonable pressure you may want to pick a new career in a different branch of photography. It seems you have some skills that can be used in many places.
Rinus of Calgary

The solution to your dilemma is realizing that your "problem" is a faulty assumption that "I mislead the public every day in order to satisfy

ib1yysguy said:

our newsprint reproduction manager."

Click to expand...

You don't. So relax - you're "not guilty."
Why? You believe something that isn't true:

ib1yysguy said:

With film colors reproduce exactly as they appear in real life.

Click to expand...

No way. That's why a photo shot on a Velvia slide looks totally different that one shot on Agfa print film. And why one shot on tungsten film differs from one on daylight film. Even an ordinary Fuji 100 is different than a Kodak 100.

You CAN'T reproduce colour accurately. It is not possible. Not by film, not by digital, not in printing ink or oil paint. That's why there ARE so many films - to TRY. And everyone's eyes differ measurably, on top of that. All you can do is make the most "realistic looking" representation as you REASONABLY can, with whatever camera, scanner. press, film, pixels, paint or other tools you have available.

Don't waste your time trying to achieve 'perfect', 'cos there ain't no perfect to achieve. Tell the story - that's the achievement to be sought.

(Two reporters would write different words to tell the same story no matter how accurate they tried to be. Photos (and photogs) differ too.)
ARS Technical Images
Edmonton, Canada

ib1yysguy said:

I dont have the manual for my camera so I've got to ask you folks.
How do you set the D1 (not x or h - though I dont know how much
difference there is) to shoot raw? I thought RAW was just shooting
with the quality setting on "High" instead of Fine. Fine produces a
JPEG, and High produces a TIFF. Are you saying that Raw produces
some other kind of file? I really dont know anything about it.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what Nikon calls it, NEF maybe, but I know their pro-level cameras support it...

RAW files are the straight sensor output of the CCD, losslessly compressed and stored. You can't view them as pictures without a special program to decode them. The program has to perform all the steps of the camera on each picture, interpolating from the sensor grid, performing white-balance, etc, etc, and then it writes out a .TIF of .JPG of the picture.

The point of this is that if you want to change one of the camera settings, you can do it later without the loss of quality you'd get if you did it in photoshop.