Thursday night parties at the Arthur Murray studio in Tysons Corner is one of the busiest nights on the dance floor! There are group classes just before the party to give students new figures, or to review old figures before they go on their own to practice. With the really nice weather we have been having, it was nice to get outside for an evening before it gets too cold! The staff put together a nice party for everyone just outside the studio this evening. They put a speaker outside, provided some food and drink, then got everyone to dance as usual.
The area around the studio has been hopping with new activity. Tysons West right across the street, new restaurants opening, and the Metro Silver Line in full testing for next year’s opening, means that there is a lot to do! The dancing created a lot of attention, and some of the people passing by jumped in when invited to dance!
Cool. Warm. These descriptive words for temperature is used widely in photography. From looking at other amateur photographers wanting to improve their photos, this is one of the first places I look at this time. Back in the film days, the color temperature of your images would have been built into the film and processing that was used in development of the negatives of slides. Today, however, the temperature of your photos can be set right in the camera, and changed as needed. In your camera settings, you look to the White Balance settings to set the color temp.
Post Processing
There are presets that manufacturers use to separate different light temperature. From cooler to warmer, the presets are usually Incandescent, Tungsten, Daylight, Flash, Cloudy, Shade, but the settings on yours may differ. In some cameras, there is also a “K” setting which stands for Kelvin temperature. With this setting you can finely tune the temperature by selecting the Kelvin setting of the light you are shooting. The scale will go from something in the 2500K range on the cool side, to 10000K on the warm side. Take some example photos, and you can see the changes as the temperature goes up in the frame. Skin tones are where you can see the changes the most:
The photo on the left is set to “Auto” in the White Balance setting. For me, the skin tones are too “cool” for my taste. Moreover for anyone that has ever been to a ballroom dance event knows that tanner is better for skin tones! The same is true when editing any portraits or group shots. Skin tones always look better warmer. This is an almost universal rule that I have learned in my photography. People look healthier, and more natural even if the skin tone does not exactly match the tone in real life.
The automatic settings in cameras or software may not give skin tones their best look. Comparatively, observe the variety of photos you come across on social media, or in your own collection, and see how they can magically be improved with adjusting one setting! Let me know how this works for you! Especially let me know if you have any other questions on how to set this on your own cameras or software. Although it is a quick fix in post, it can make a large difference!
I felt bad about the comparison I made last week comparing the iPhone 5 images to a Nikon D4, a full-frame DSLR. Although, I was testing the limits of the smart phone camera that early in the morning without much help from any natural light. So today I will post some photos from bright, sunny conditions. This will show what it can do in very bright light. Comparatively, this should even the competition. This is not the “best” light for photos. Most of these are in the middle of the day without many clouds in the sky. Addtionally the sun is almost directly overhead. Portraits would not look very good in this light. However buildings, structures and other non-faces can be done. Additionally, with some post-processing they can look decent even from the iPhone.
Baltimore, MD has the tallest buildings in the state of Maryland. Just a few blocks off the Inner Harbor, and you are in the canyons of streets lined with these buildings. Having plenty of overhead sun and no clouds in the sky are emphatically perfect conditions for a point and shoot or smartphone camera to perform it’s best. The smaller sensor in these devices require much more light than larger cameras, so these images are almost as good as what they can produce.
With just a touch of clarity and contrast, the graphics painted onto the side of this truck are and the sharpness of the text in the license plate are indistinguishable from images taken with any other camera. The bright light in the area means that there is no camera shake from slow shutter speeds. Especially when taking photos of dark subjects, the smartphone camera will compensate for the lack of light by increasing the shutter speed which is very difficult to hold still without introducing shake. These cameras were not designed to be mounted on a tripod, and are hard to hold steady for very long. Give a scene lots of light, though, and that problem goes away.
With the low ISO settings in the bright light, vivid colors can be reproduced. In this last photo, the bright red paint on this hauler is faithfully reproduced. Adding more Clarity in Lightroom is the only adjustment needed to finish this image. If only the iPhone were able to write the RAW data from the sensor, it could be a viable replacement in the right situations!
