A Horrid Shade of Yellow

agnatha · Aug 3, 2012

Hi there everybody.
I don't know if you all remembered, but i introduced myself already as being NOT the best photographer. I'm still not very good, but I ordered a nice slr over the internet, and hopefully when it gets here, i'll be able to better teach myslef what the hell i'm doing.
Anyhow, in the mean time, I stiill have my old camera, which sucks for a lot of reasons, but the most current one that i've noticed is that it doesn't take indoor shots for crap. And aside from being blurry and generally unappealing to look at, what really irks me it that the indoor light leaves a horrific yellow cast to the whole shot.
This happens with my camera phone too. I don't think that i've evr been able to take a shot inside of my house withour it looking like and underwater pee party. And i'm not talking a yellow like a ray of sun at noon - yellow. I'm talking dirty diaper yellow.
So what's the deal with this awful shade of yellow? Where does it come from, and how do i eradicate it?
Is there any way that it's simply the lighting inside of my house, or is this a problem that real photographers have too?

Designer · Aug 3, 2012

It sounds like the lighting to me. Incandescent lights throw a yellow cast. Can you correct the white balance on your computer?

KmH · Aug 3, 2012

Yep, the yellow cast is caused by having the wrong white balance setting for the type of lighting (incandescent/tungsten). The camera does not work like our eyes work, and has to be told what kind of lights (color temperature) are the main light source.

Understanding White Balance

Color temperature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Solarflare · Aug 4, 2012

Even my cheapest digital camera, a 4 year old point & shoot, already allows to use a graycard for setting white balance.

Actually it would be kind of more important being able to change the exposure, but oh well.

TCampbell · Aug 5, 2012

Imagine you had a light that truly gave off "white" light. If you put a yellow gel in front of it, you'd expect the light to give off a yellow cast. Put a blue gel in front and you'd expect a blue color cast.

Well it turns out... most light sources you think of as "white" aren't really white at all. Your brain knows what the scene *should* look like and automatically adjusts for minor color casts. The camera doesn't necessarily auto-adjust and even when it's in a mode telling it to auto-adjust, it often gets it wrong. As a result the photos can reveal the strong color casts that actually do exist in real life.

A candle clearly gives off a yellow/golden light and it turns out incandescent bulbs ALSO give off yellow/golden light... just brighter. Most lighting gives off some color cast but your brain tends to compensate for it unless the color cast is particularly strong.

This means your new "better" camera will suffer the same problem until you learn about "white balance" and start controlling it.

The fix is easy... your camera has a white balance control. It has settings for tungsten/incandescent (these two are the same... incandescent light bulbs use a tungsten filament), florescent, sunlight, etc. It also has an "auto" setting which tells the camera to guess what the correct white balance should be. Often it will guess wrong -- so you can't rely on "auto" white balance. If a shot really matters, you can use a simple inexpensive device called a "gray card" to correct any color cast created by light. Most of time, however, it's adequate to just tell the camera what is providing the light.

A gray card (I use a "Lastolite" brand "EzyBalance" card which is collapsable into a small pouch) is fairly cheap. Mine was about $25... and there are many that cost much less. In other words, it's the sort of thing that probably every photographer should probably own... even if you don't need to use it very often. There are tutorials online showing how to use these -- it really is rather easy. It allows you to nail the white balance perfectly. Just remember that if the lighting conditions change then you'll need to shoot another frame with the gray card. When you're done, don't forget to take the camera out of custom-white-balance mode. If you shoot in RAW then the camera wont perform white balance correction -- instead you'll do that on your computer. You still take a frame with the gray card in it. You can use that to correct the white balance and then apply the same white balance to all the other shots you took in the same light.

One last thing: The color you see on your monitor may not be correct (also, do not trust the colors you see on the tiny LCD screen on the back of your camera.) My monitor originally caused images to appear less yellow then they really were. So when I thought things were correctly adjusted based on what I saw on the computer screen, everyone else thought my images were too yellow. I bought a calibration tool for the monitor and now know that my colors are correct and no longer have that problem.

deeky · Aug 5, 2012

They are all correct that the white balance in a digital cam should take care of that. In the mean time, assuming you are shooting film, there is a filter that you can use to correct the color temp. The only time I saw one was when I was working in the theater in college. If you think your lights at home have a tungsten glow, try theater lighting. This was before digital had really taken off, so a filter solved the issue. Sorry, I didnm't know enough back then to pay attention to what kind of a filter it was. Maybe others can provide a better idea there.

Buckster · Aug 6, 2012

deeky said:
They are all correct that the white balance in a digital cam should take care of that. In the mean time, assuming you are shooting film, there is a filter that you can use to correct the color temp. The only time I saw one was when I was working in the theater in college. If you think your lights at home have a tungsten glow, try theater lighting. This was before digital had really taken off, so a filter solved the issue. Sorry, I didnm't know enough back then to pay attention to what kind of a filter it was. Maybe others can provide a better idea there.

Rather than put a corrective filter over the lens like we did in the old days of film, which introduces a whole list of other potential problems, learn to adjust the white balance setting on the camera, as others have recommended.

agnatha · Aug 6, 2012

ok, thanks for the advice, i figured that it was the lighting in my house. as far as the camera having a correction for it, i know that my last one did, but this new one, i'm still figuring out. of course, i can take it out in photoshop, but i've learned that people tend to like pictures that use the least of photoshop, so if, at all i can avoid it, i try to.

i was saving up to buy an slr, i was going to do it with my photoshop contest winnings. i'm about a week away from my goal. but in the mean time, i'm stuck trying to figure out a third camera that i've borrowed.
it is not going well as i'm still stuck on focusing.

i think that i may well just go back to the older camera, where at least i know how to use it.