John Rylands Library 16 07 2011

[John]

Many thanks to Anne Young of John Rylands Library for the guided tour and the special viewing. Here's a picture of ADAPS at the Library, with Fox Talbot's "Pencil of Nature" at the far end of the table.

Please post some of your images in this thread!

[pammie]

Here's a few quickies before we head off for the week.

[Myra]

Enjoyed the day very much, great shots Pammie enjoy your hols.

Myra

[stelee]

Reading lamp

[stelee]

No photographers.

[Stu B]

I love this building..But find it a bit of a challenge to photograph. Comments more than welcome...

[Theo Dibbits]

I certainly enjoyed the trip. (thanks for organising John) Not sure if I have got anything worth keeping.

I think John's image is a clear advert why you should shoot RAW in mixed lighting.

BUT I noticed that the free RAW converter Capture One Express 6 (see other posts) allow white balance editing of JPEGs and TIFFs
(don't ask me how that works)
Here is John's image after clicking on the grey stripe in Des Barr's top with the whitebalance eyedropper tool.

I am getting more and more impressed with this bit of software.

Theo

[Stu B]

Wow Theo thats quite impressive, for just a few clicks..

[John]

It's corrected the undeniably difficult colour balance in one way, but unfortunately made the overall image more insipid and has given a greenish tinge to the stonework. The skin tones may be better though.

[bert haddock]

Hi Folks,
I enjoyed the day, though this isn't my usual type of subject, I got some reasonably good images but most ended up down the pan as in this shot.
Bert.

[PhilipHowe]

Theo, you can open a jpeg in Adobe CAmera RAw as well and change the white balance etc. You have to get at it through Bridge. Just right click it and select Camera RAW from the menu.

I was at photovision and Guy Gowan said it was the best way to upscale images by clicking the link at the bottom and changing the dpi and size.

[Tom Gerrard]

So the RAW jpeg discussion goes on and on, as it as done for years and will continue for ever and ever. Amen. I think most people know which format I advocate so I will not amplify further. Do try them both and see which is best for YOU.
Remember you all shoot in RAW initially, some of you continue to process that file (if your camera allows) whilst other decide to chuck half the information away and let their camera convert it to jpeg.
If you wish to open a jpeg in Camera Raw, open Photoshop -> File -> Preferences -> File Preferences -> Camera Preferences and find as below.

raw.jpg (198.42 KiB) Viewed 9806 times

Select the the last two options as shown and Robert is your fathers brother.

Regards, Tom.

[Des]

These are the doors to Berts pan

[Theo Dibbits]

Thanks Tom and Philip. You learn something every day.

John
I agree that the colours are not brilliant and maybe this is because of my next question.

I have always been under the impression that the whitebalance was fixed when the file is converted from RAW to JPEG (in or out of camera)
If this is true how does whitebalance adjustment work for a JPEG?
Does it achieve exactly the same result as when applied to a RAW file or is it simply a wholesale colour shift? The software appears to use the same methodology and I presume the same algorithms for both.
Very confusing.

Theo

[John]

All that happens is that the colour temperature is changed. So everything goes either more red or more blue. For closer control, Channel Mixer will mix the various colours independently.

Now when we have very severe colour shift, as in the Library, we're in difficulty. Correcting for a grey point or some other tone will change everything else as well, sometimes not for the better. This is why I shoot using Daylight setting, to keep the ambient lighting recorded as-is. It was a little too red in my image because of the tungsten light being added to the mix, so I used Photo Filter with a slight amount of 80 correction, thus shifting the balance slightly towards the blue.

We can chicken out when it gets very bad and convert to black and white. Sometimes this can be a good option. The alternative would be to light the scene the way professional film-makers do, and then the problem would definitely be solved.