Ask Ken:
Your source for expert advice.
Ken, Why are the people in my pictures green?
PROBLEM # 5: Green Martians.
The pictures come out okay, they are sharp and clear, but the colors aren't right. White walls look yellow-green and people look jaundiced or something.
This is what's going on here. Your average roll of film is designed to reproduce color correctly when exposed to white light. Which is what daylight or flash is. But this situation isn't lit by daylight or flash...it's lit by flourescent light; which isn't white...it's actually greenish-yellow.
When you looked at the scene, you didn't see it as greenish-yellow. Your brain, knowing what the colors should be, adjusted the data your eyes recorded.
But the camera, doesn't have a brain, and it recorded what was really there.And the automatic machine printer that printed these images doesn't have a brain either. So it printed the pictures green.
But this isn't the end of the world here. A knowledgeble operator can adjust the machine to correct this color cast. Now since it was shot under the "wrong" color light, it won't be perfect, but it doesn't have to be this bad.
Take a look at the second picture. The same negative, with the printer adjusted to compensate for the flourescent color cast.
There is a second possibility though. The image could have been shot correctly in the correct color of light...and an out-of-whack printer or negligent operator just printed it wrong.
If you see this in your digital camera images it means this green scene was shot with the "white balance" set to daylight. So the digital,(like the film) recorded the color wrong.
Ken.
Have a problem you would like to see addressed in this column? Send me an email at kencasey@caseycolor.com
