TIP : MACRO colour cast (Definition from the net) “A colour cast is a tint of a particular colour, USUALLY unwanted, which affects the whole of a photographic image evenly. Certain types of light can cause film and digital cameras to have a colour cast.” When I started photography I did not understand what this meant but now my eye has been “trained” (most times) to enable me to identify and determine that my images have an unwanted colour cast. There are many ways to mitigate or remove this for both MACRO and LANDSCAPE photography. Again I state this is my personal view only as it may be that people leave the colour cast by choice or just for artistic purposes however if you wish to get the correct colours of the image then there are ways to resolve colour cast ‘issues’. Colour cast can be caused by many factors and could include camera settings, flash or continuos lights being used, natural light etc. So some methods to resolve colour cast can be achieved through the camera/or and via your workflow process, whilst editing in your RAW editor or editing software such as Lightroom, Photoshop or other applications. Check out Youtube as there are many examples to help you with this. I am not suggesting that this is a mandatory step but I found that the colour cast provides an unnatural colour through the whole image thus not reflecting the actual colours of the subject matter or surroundings. Give it a try and experiment with your current images and compare. See if it makes a difference. I think you will be surprised by the results especially for EXTREME macro work. EXAMPLES ONLY: If your continuous light and/or camera are making your image yellowish, then you can adjust your Kelvin (in camera) down to a lower number, say, between 4000-5000. Play with the settings till you get it how you like it or vice versa if its too blue then increase it to 5000-6000 or higher, experiment. If you are not using Kelvin settings then just flick through the ‘White Balance Options’ and pick one that suits.. If you process the RAW images in a raw editor or editing software such as CS you can adjust your white balance also. There are so many way do this. REMEMBER, ONLY WAY TO LEARN AND IMPROVE IS TO TEST AND EXPERIMENT FOR YOURSELF, don’t take my word for it. CAVEAT If you see the definition above from the net, the key word is “USUALLY unwanted”. What does this mean? Well what I discovered was for LANDSCAPE photography particularly for SUNRISE AND SUNSET shots, colour cast is the norm in most cases. For example, in sunrise and sunset you may have the sky completely filled with colour/s eg pinks, yellows. red, and this acts like a giant filter that blankets the sky and reflects the colour through the whole scene, the sky, the water, rocks, sand etc, giving a, lets say pink colour cast. In this instance why would anyone wish to remove the colour cast. Again its about personal choices . Hope this helps, so try this on your macro images!
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 12:29:43 +0000