Transformation when put online - Help?

[Leslie Ficcaglia]

I have somewhat the opposite problem in that when the picture looks right on my monitor, saving it as a jpeg for the web seems to wash it out. This occurs whether it's a perfectly balanced photo from my Nikon 35 mm that I've scanned in or a digital photo that I have to doctor in Photoshop. For me, shooting paintings outdoors with my Canon G2, or even in too much light in the studio, means that I'll have a sort of pebbled, light and dark checkering look on the canvas where the illumination was slightly brighter. To avoid that I have to shoot those indoors in quite even, rather dull light and then massage them on the computer.

A photographer suggested that I not choose "Save for Web" but simply change the resolution of the image to 72 pixels per inch and upload the picture that way. It does seem to result in truer color. I don't know whether that helps.

[Julie Deane]

Thanks Leslie -

I had a much higher pixels per inch ratio - I'll try your suggestions and see if they help.

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Hi Julie,

We had a professional photographer in our home today taking photos of our kids so I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about lighting. I was having trouble getting what I considered 'true' or real color with my digital camera. The first thing he suggested was that I use my 'white balancing'. I had no idea what that was or even if my camera had it.

Well, my camera has it. It might help you, my manual says "when the white balance mode is set to match the light source, the camera can reproduce colors more accurately." That sounds good,doesn't it?

I wish I could tell you more about it and/or if it'll really help, but that might be something for you to experiment with.

Good luck,

Joan

[Julie Deane]

Hi Joan -

I'm still learning my camera too. I just checked my manual - and - by golly, besides the automatic setting for white balance, which is what I guess I have been using, it has settings for daylight, cloudy, tungsten, flourescent, flash and custom. I had no idea!

Thanks!

[Marvin Mattelson]

Does your camera have a white balance setting?

Sound familiar? See my post above.

Matching film type to light source has always been one of the most crucial challenges for photographers. Professional photographers use color temperature meters, costing about $1000.00 to be able to accurately gauge color. Then they either filter their lights or place filters in front of the lenses.

With the advent of digital photography it has become far easier. You can place a neutral photo gray card in your scene and move forward until it fills your viewfinder and take a custom light balance reading. Be careful to not cast a shadow on the gray card. That's the purpose of the "custom" setting. Check your manual for the specifics. You can also use a white board but the results may not be as dependable due to the differences in whites.

My Nikon D70 allows me to take a photo with a gray card placed in the scene and adjust the color temperature in the Nikon Capture software when I download the image to my MAC. I can then upload the corrected image to my camera and use this image to set my white balance. It allows me to have virtually perfect color.

I have been doing a lot of testing with the camera and just feel I'm beginning getting the hang of things. I'm also able to load custom photoshop type curves into the camera. Having these adjustments squared away before the moment of capture gives me better quality pictures with no data loss.

[Joan Breckwoldt]

Yes Marvin, that does look familiar. The difference is that you know what you're talking about and I just parrot what the photographer said this morning. Had this question come up a week from now I probably would have forgotton that I even heard 'white balance'. Luckily this has come up now while it's fresh in my head. There is so much to learn, things disappear as new info comes in.

My camera manual has 2 pages on setting the white balance. Who knew?

There's a page on 'setting a custom white balance' and it talks about that 'photo-quality gray card' you mentioned. I'm assuming that's a special gray card that I can find at a photography shop. Or maybe it's any gray card that I will use to match?

Perhaps this will help with the discrepancy I had when shooting my 'babysitter portraits'. I even started a thread asking anyone why my color might have been so far off given the conditions. I can't wait to start experimenting with the white balance.

Thanks for the info Marvin on the white balance.

Joan

[Julie Deane]

Thank you so much Marvin, for mentioning with more specifics on how to use "custom balance".

My manual talks about it using a white cardstock. No mention was made whatsoever of using the gray card, which I've used successfully for film shoots, but didn't know how to use for digital.