Saturday, September 20, 2014

Canon 7D - Blue-Green Twilight Color Balance - Revisited

In a post last month, I discussed a new tool for fine tuning white balance in-camera: White Balance Shift. Since then, I've been playing around with this setting on a numerous occasions, with mixed results (notably, for the tail end of the sunset on Aug 20). Last week, an opportunity to use this came up, with a crisp clear night and the fickle blue-green twilight that had eluded me up till now...


Finally, I think I've nailed it! The shot above was all in-camera white balance (no tweaks applied, as far as I can remember). The settings for this are as follows:
  • White Balance Mode (aka "Base" WB) = Shade
  • WB Shift = B7, G6
  • Exposure Compensation = -1 1/3
Contrary to my initial belief, it was necessary to bias the WB towards blue (instead of amber) to really draw out those rich bluish-green hues. Otherwise, you just get purple blue, with all the green-bits turned to white or faint orange-yellow. So, there you have it! The recipe for capturing blue-green twilights.

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