camera quality, skin tone

[pocketshaver]

Heres a funny question. How do you guys deal with individuals skin tone with the digital camera in your phones?

Im a normal looking white guy, but I have never had a photograph of me with a phone camera that actually had me come out the right skin color. I mean I come out yellow.

To be honest the only time a digital camera has taken a photo of me that turned out correctly, was for my senior photos in 2001. Professional studio, had what he said was a 10,000 digital portrait camera.

 

[Derrel]

i use the iPhone SE. Has pretty good skin tones of caucasian and hispanic faces/skin tones.

 

[tirediron]

This relates to white balance, or, for lack of a better term, the "colour" of light, and how the camera records it. It's usually referred to in Kelvin, and ranges from very blue (cold) to very yellow (warm). Time of day, temperature, cloud cover, surroundings, etc all have an effect on the white balance and every camera deals with it in a different way. In the pre-digital era, different films had different white balance values. Most modern digital cameras allow you a choice of pre-set white balance values to account for different conditions, as well as the ability to set a pre-determined or specific value. Software allows you to adjust this after the fact as well.

The fact that the photographer who "got you right" in 2001 one had a $10,000 camera is irrelevant. What he actually had was the knowledge to ensure that colours were rendered correctly. In a studio setting this is easier as studio lights produce a consistent colour of light. The simplest way to correct it otherwise is to find a part of the image that you know should be pure white, and in the software of your choice, select the white balance tool (often an eye-dropper icon), click on the area that should be white and the software will correct the image to that value.

 

[Original katomi]

Old time wedding photographer used to have a sm piece of the brides white ribbon. Today with digital we have colour cards and adjustable white balance. I often pick a known colour to balance from gray paving slabs or if I am looking ahead a sheet of white paper I don’t know if phones will shot raw but enemy if I have a jpg image I open it in the raw editor ok there is not so many options but there is a bit of wriggle room eps if the in camer shot is good to start with

 

[Designer]

Heres a funny question. How do you guys deal with individuals skin tone with the digital camera in your phones?

Im a normal looking white guy, but I have never had a photograph of me with a phone camera that actually had me come out the right skin color. I mean I come out yellow.

It's a normal question. We get that a lot on here. It's the white balance (WB). If the photographer wants correct colors, he should;

1. Consider what light sources are lighting his subject.
2. Make sure all lighting is of the same color (called degrees Kelvin).
3. Capture the Raw file to allow for a wider latitude of color adjustment.
4. Some camera sensors just naturally capture better (or worse) skin tones than others.

Could be that the phone camera just makes your skin look yellow, no matter what light. This is a color bias built into the camera's firmware, and would be difficult to overcome in the editing process, but not impossible.