Blue skies - white balance

[mwpeters]

Last Friday I spend two hours at the Air Force days in Leeuwarden. I enjoyed the show from what I have seen. After editing some pictures this week and checking some other photographers pictures, I am always wondering how everybody is playing with the white balance tooling in Photoshop.

I found this picture from Iwan in another topic:


COPYRIGHT IWAN BÖGELS

During the show I was standing just 1 meter next to Iwan, pressed the shutter a split second faster, but my shot was like this, :



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It is not that I don't like Iwan's picture, but if I remember correctly the sky was pretty blue that time of the day.

Now I have several questions:
1. Iwan, what is the reason your sky is almost grey and mine so blue?
2. What do the photographers here preffer?
3. Does the photographers here preffer pictures which represents the sky of the day, or do they preffer better light conditions on the subject? (I actually preffer my sky and Iwan´s light conditions on the F-16's)

[pjotrtje]

Honestly, I think the second picture is just too blue...

[wild weasel]

Your picture indeed is way to blue......on the other hand, it´s a matter of taste too of course. Best thing to solve white balance issues, is to shoot in RAW/NEF. Then you can adjust the WB settings during post processing (so afterwords), and allso will give you the opportunity to play with it a little bit. Downside to that is that you will have to post process (kind of) all your images......shooting in RAW will give you much more workspace to work with......

Good luck!

[Wildpicture]

Load your picture in Photoshop and select Image->Auto color
The result will be color which are nearly identical to the first image.

What you prefer in terms of color balance is personal. If you shoot in early morning or afternoon the image will be warmer. At noon in a blue sky it will be cooler. If the image shows it the way it was shot, it is more "true" of the actual conditions. But of course you can change the color temperature to make it more neutral if that is what you like.

[mwpeters]

Offcourse I do shoot my photos in RAW. My prefference is always to make the picture a little bit cooler (more blue). This will automatically effect the colour of the object as well. I never use auto functions in Photoshop as I often don't like the results.

[Wildpicture]

I am not suggesting that you should post-process your images with auto settings, just that in this particular image an auto-color adjustment will produce an image nearly equal to the first one.

Personally I find your image too cool. The sky may be blue instead of grey but the colors on the F-16's are not true. In editing I always try to make the image seem as close to actual as possible. But priority will be to show aircraft colors (not sky color) as close to actual as possible. Unless of course you have a sunset shot or something like that.

Most aircraft will have some spots which are clear white on which you can use the color picker in ACR. E.g. landing gear or even the white of the KLu roundel.

[DJdeRidder]

Interesting topic. I don't think you should compare the color of the sky that you saw yourself to the color of the sky in your image. There will always be some differences, because your eyes are much more 'powerful' than a camera sensor. I use White Balance to make sure white remains white in the image. That's what the tool was designed for. The colors of the aircraft photographed are more important to me than the color of the sky, so normally I don't really bother about your question (but I'd be very interested to hear how these differences are created)..

I'm not into the technical side of photography, but the settings used between the two photos are pretty different as well.
Iwan's photo was taken with a 1D IV @ 1/2000th, f/11 & ISO 800.
Your photo with a 1D II @1/1000th, f/5.6 & ISO 100.
How would the different sensors of the Mark II/IV, shutterspeed, aperture and ISO setting affect the color of the sky, anyone?

I think Iwan's shot looks a bit better, but still I think it has too much of a yellow/red tint. In my opinion it looks better with some tiny adjustments, like this:

[EHAM]

In my opinion the 3rd shot (DJ's) is the best. I don't think ISO, shutter speed and F-stop affect colours/WB, just dark and light, but I'm not a professional either. So I think it depends on the sensor and your camera settings (and of course the processing in Photoshop).

[mwpeters]

Hi DJ,
I agree what you mention, although I always tend to have a little bit of blue in the skies. I must admit, that I like your processed photo most.
What are your "tiny" adjustments?
Cheers!

[Leeuwarden]

Just wondering... has everybody calibrated his/her screen in the same way?

[Airshow Action]

Just wondering... has everybody calibrated his/her screen in the same way?

Yes good question.. and the quality of monitor..

[mwpeters]

I tried to calibrate my monitor (Samsung), but was unable to succeed.

[mwpeters]

Hello Guys,
I played a little bit in Photoshop, and must admit my picture was pretty blue. I think my screen at home is slightly of, as I see difference between my home screen (less blue) and screen at work (more blue). Nevertheless, I re-edited my picture, please feedback the result.

Initial picture:


Re-edited picture:


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[FISHER01]

now the picture has to much contrast (sky is to white and the shadow is to much) imho color of the F-16's looks good

[DJdeRidder]

What are your "tiny" adjustments?

I simply opened the image in Lightroom and applied Temp -5, Tint -5 (the two White Balance sliders). Not sure, but I think it will be pretty much the same in Camera Raw (Photoshop). Of course, the results will be better if you take the Raw image.