102 Better Available Light Digital Photography
Flexibility isn’t just a term applied to yoga practitioners, but stretches to fi t photographers as well. Barry’s
intention on every assignment is to achieve correct Color Balance in-camera, avoiding the costly postproduc-
tion time spent correcting bad color. The color-temperature meter or Custom White Balance panels mentioned
above will do this. Enter the real world—in this case, an operating suite in the Health Sciences Center at the
University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. After suiting up in surgical scrubs, he was escorted into the room
with surgery already in progress. It’s doubtful that anyone in the room would have appreciated a request to
approach the sterile fi eld to take color-temperature readings, let alone that they would have understood the
need to hold up a Custom White Balance device above the patient. Several test shots were quickly taken using
different White Balance settings. Barry reviewed each on the camera’s LCD screen, chose the one that looked
best, set the camera accordingly, and completed the assignment, knowing that some tweaking would be
required in postproduction. © 2006 Barry Staver.
Black and white?
One way to completely avoid the problems associated with
Color Balance is to shoot in black and white. O.K., you say,
“That’s cheating”—but where does it say that available light
photographs have to be made in color? Many digital SLRs have
built-in Monochrome modes. Some even have modes that
enhance gray tones while making the color less vibrant, creating
an old-fashioned, even hand-colored look—all in-camera.
Canon, Fuji, Nikon, and Olympus SLRs are not unique in having
a Monochrome mode; just about everybody’s point-and-shot digi-
cams offer something similar. The Nikon D40x has a Retouch
menu that offers exclusive in-camera image-editing features that
add to the D40x’s “fun factor” by providing greater creativity
without the need for a computer. Included in the Retouch menu is