When I shoot a sunset, it never appears as it does in the viewfinder. The orange and red colours consistently appear dull and lifeless. What am I doing wrong?
The answer here is white balance. Every scene you shoot has an array of colours. Ideally, you wish to capture what the eye sees. However you camera may make automatic adjustments to the final image.
Many cameras have automatic white balance set. This means that the camera will average out the colours in the scene to ensure that the extremes of normal are removed. In most situations this is not a problem.
In some scenes, you will have excesses of colour which the camera interprets as an imbalance but which the eye considers acceptable.
With a sunset, you have an excess of reds, oranges and yellows. Your camera tries to make adjustments for this as it sees the scene as too warm. So you end up with muted colours and a drab sunset.
The answer is to set the white balance to manual. Choosing the daylight setting will ensure your daytime images appear as they are seen by you. Similarly, you can set for cloudy, indoor or flash to retain the intended colour casts and mixes
Eric Hartwell runs the photography resource site http://www.theshutter.co.uk and the associated discussion forums as well as the regular weblog at http://thephotographysite.blogspot.com.
