ISO and White Balance

Long time no post. Sorry. I was busy all weekend playing in a soccer tournament. Lot's of fun, but I was too afraid to leave my camera on the sidelines while I was playing. Anyway. Ever since I got my camera I've had trouble shooting indoors at night, which is a particular problem for me since the only real free time I have to take photos (other than weekends) is indoors at night. Basically, I don't like using the flash and when I turn the flash off and adjust the aperture and shutter speed to compensate, all my photos come out with an eerie orange glow, like I am taking photos inside a pumpkin or something. So, being the resourceful guy that I am, I went to the library and checked out some books on digital photography. Sure enough, there was an answer out there, and here it is.

First, you have to change the ISO setting. I was pretty afraid of ISO when I first got my camera. Kind of like being afraid of the dark -- its not what we know that scares us, it's what we don't know. Anyway, here's the skinny on ISO: in the old days, ISO referred to how sensitive the camera film was to light. These days the film has been replaced with the camera's sensor, but same idea. In bright conditions you want use a lower ISO like 100. The quality of photographs is better with lower a ISO -- colors will be more saturated and details will be better preserved. However, if you are in lower light, like at night and indoors under electric lights, increasing the ISO to 400 or 800, will allow you to take photos without using the flash. Also, if you open the aperture wide (lowest f-stop your lens will allow), you can still have a reasonably fast shutter speed so all those cute photos of fast moving kids don't come out as a blur. The draw back to increasing the ISO is that it creates noise. Noise is camera-talk for a grainy texture. It's a trade off, but better than the washed out effect of using a flash, I think.

Second trick is adjusting the white balance. Again, initially I was very afraid of white balance settings. To understand white balance you need to convince yourself that light has color. Some light is warm and reddish, some is cool and bluish. Camera makers, being the smart guys that they are, figured this out and gave digital cameras an automatic white balance setting that causes the camera to take the color out of light. However, this is really bad if, for example, you are taking photos of sunsets or nature and you really want a warm glow in your photos. Additionally, the auto white balance setting is a fairly blunt instrument. So again, camera makers being smart guys, give you the option to adjust the white balance settings, basically letting the camera know what lighting conditions you are shooting in so it doesn't eliminate something you want or compensate for something in the wrong way. So, last night I set the white balance to incandescent lighting and presto, we no longer lived inside a pumpkin. When shooting nature, I set the white balance to sunlight or cloudy, depending on conditions. It's a cool little trick, worth messing around with. Of course if you're super savvy in photoshop, you can do white balance clean up on the back end as well. But nothing's better than getting it right the first time. Okay, enough talk. Here are some of my indoor photos from last night using my new found ISO and white balance knowledge.

The following photo is of post-family home evening treats. Using a low f-stop (large aperture), I get a shallower depth of field, so Hannah is in focus but Benjamin is a little blurry. I think that's kind of cool and artsy, especially since I know why it happened and actually meant to do it.


The following photo is a good one of Helen and Mary.


These last two photos were actually taken by my wife. I was in the car on my way home from work and this sunset exploded (this is the type of sunset I wanted on Antelope Island). I was wishing I had my camera. I called my wife on the phone and, in an amazing display of marital vulcan mind melding, she said, "I thought it might be you, I was just outside taking photos of the sunset with your camera." Thanks wife. You've got a great eye.