At sunset what color is the landscape?

[riooso]

I will have a hard time framing the question, but here goes. When I take an image of a scene, at sunset, with the sun at my back I get a orange cast, of course. When I look at the scene while the picture is being taken there is a little orange to the scene but not a lot. When I measure the wavelength with a spectrometer it is most definitely orange, very orange. I am shooting 100 Velvia and when scanned it shows a lot of orange in the scene and from what I can tell, from my limited instruments, it is justifiably so. So when I print the image should I diminish the color saturation of the scene to reflect what my mind saw or should I keep it bright like what is probably really there?
Trivial on one level but it is hard to show people and have them believe the image is real. How do most of you all handle this, it has to come up, yes?

Thanks,
Richard P. Adams

[JW Dewdney]

a spectrometer? Do you mean a spectrophotometer? Can I ask you how on earth you're managing that? I'm just curious. that's all.

[riooso]

I measure the light by just looking at the different wavelenghts in the spectrometer and it tells me what the different wavelengths are, not quantity but if the sodium wavelenght is in abundance and the rest are not there then ones knows the wavelength, yes?

Richard

[Vaughn]

I believe our brain "adjusts" the color to what it expects to be there. Headlights at night don't look yellow, they look like a normally balenced white -- until one of those cars with the new blue headlights pass by. Regular incandesent bulbs put out a much more yellow light than daylight, yet we don't notice it. Holding a white piece of paper under tungsten lights does not look yellowish to our brain, not matter what the color meter reads.

Plus the fact that everyone sees color differently (with the extreme cases called color "blindness").

So make the prints the color YOU want it to be...because the actual color you experienced is totally subjective. Part of this is deciding if you want to record what you experienced, what was "really" there, or what others expect to see.

Vaughn

[JW Dewdney]

I measure the light by just looking at the different wavelenghts in the spectrometer and it tells me what the different wavelengths are, not quantity but if the sodium wavelenght is in abundance and the rest are not there then ones knows the wavelength, yes?

Richard

I was asking - because the only devices I know that can do this are in chemistry labs.. you fill a cuvette with the liquid in question to do a spectral analysis of the material...

[Struan Gray]

So-called 'direct vision' spectroscopes were once a popular toy for gentleman scientists. Edmund optics will sell you one for $100 or so. They have a collimating lens, a slit and a dispersing prism: you point them at a light source and see the spectrum directly. Works well for light sources, but not for reflections off landscapes.

Homebrew versions using a CD or DVD as the dispersing element work well, but can end up rather large (cereal packet sized). The commercial prism-based ones are the size of a laser pointer.

I like to take photos 30-60 degrees away from the setting sun, precisely because the colours there are so unpredictable.

[JW Dewdney]

cool. i want one. the big question is, however - can i impress women with it??

[Struan Gray]

I'm afraid that when it comes to grating monochromators, size does matter.

[Bruce Watson]

So when I print the image should I diminish the color saturation of the scene to reflect what my mind saw or should I keep it bright like what is probably really there?

You are free to manipulate the print in any way that you want.

To know how to interpret an image into a satisfying print, you must answer the question: What are you trying to say with your print?

No one can answer this question for you.

[riooso]

Thanks guys. I know that I can do anything to the image that I wish but when does it get to be a question of "realism" like taking a telephone pole out of the scene? Doesn't matter?

Thanks,
Richard

[Jim Jirka]

Well there you go. It seems I learn something everyday. I thought the color at sunset was black.:D

[Struan Gray]

I thought the color at sunset was black.:D

http://web.telia.com/~u83208794/pics/cn0011.jpg

Only if you close your eyes.

Tight.

[Dave Parker]

The color of sunset is the exact reason I use a highly over saturated film to take the image, to emphasize the dramatic warm orange colors...besides manipulation in the computer to get the color you want, you might try a few of the less saturated films to reach the color your after...

[Bruce Watson]

...when does it get to be a question of "realism" like taking a telephone pole out of the scene? Doesn't matter?

It's still a question of intent. If you intend for your print to be documentary, then you leave the telephone pole in. If you intend for the print to express your awe of the untrammeled landscape, then you take the telephone pole out. Either way, it definitely matters.

[tim atherton]

Thanks guys. I know that I can do anything to the image that I wish but when does it get to be a question of "realism" like taking a telephone pole out of the scene? Doesn't matter?

Thanks,
Richard

Every photograph is a fiction to one extent or another. Remember that the photograph and the thing photographed are rather different.

[Jim Galli]

Society has moved ever more towards dripping oversaturated gaudy colors. Why only move slightly in the other direction. Switch to black and white. Problem solved. It works so well, you won't even bother shooting sunsets or rainbows at all any more.

[tim atherton]

"How do I know this colour is red?", Wittgenstein asked. "...because I have learned English", was his reply.

.

[Jack Flesher]

Truthfully, what does it matter? At the end of the day, especially for an artist, there is no such thing as accurate color. (Heck, ask a color-management guru and they'll even tell you there is no such thing as perfectly accurate color, only better approximations to it.) We all "see" through our own internal filter sets, subconciously applied or not; film records through its own filter of physical limitation as does digital; scanning and/or printing and/or web then impart their characteristics to the final image. If it works for you, I say it works.

[Ben R]

Truthfully, what does it matter? At the end of the day, especially for an artist, there is no such thing as accurate color. (Heck, ask a color-management guru and they'll even tell you there is no such thing as perfectly accurate color, only better approximations to it.) We all "see" through our own internal filter sets, subconciously applied or not; film records through its own filter of physical limitation as does digital; scanning and/or printing and/or web then impart their characteristics to the final image. If it works for you, I say it works.

Added to that, just as no screen will look the same, neither do our eyes, the colour you see in almost certainly not exactly the same colour that the artist sees or the printer for that matter. Some may see an RGB value as more orange or red than someone else, all that you can do is assign a number to the colour, not describe how it is experienced by a human eye. Just to throw another spanner in the works of the purists...

[Ron Marshall]

The following link is to a site with some comparison sunset shots of Provia and Velvia, 50 and 100.

http://www.coastalbeacons.com/Velvia50vs100F/velvia50vs100F.htm

[Glenn Thoreson]

If it's too orange, why not just use the appropriate filter? Much easier than trying to over analyze it. An 80A should do it.

[Eric James]

I'd never seen this thread but was thinking along the same lines last night, waiting for the magic light: Astia or Velvia? Astia or Velvia? Neither film would have provided a shot that matched what my eyes saw when the shutter was open, but I settled on Astia.

At some point we all throw up our hands and realize that we won't be able to achieve "accurate" color, or mimic what our eyes see when the exposure is made; what we do at that point is up to us: saturate the orange, correct it up front or in PS, mellow it with a different emulsion...

Someone mentioned earlier that the orange is there, but our eyes adjust. I suppose the same can be said for the blue in snow - ask 10 people and 9 will tell you that snow is white; ask them what color the same snow is in their photographs and the consensus shifts to blue.

[Brian C. Miller]

Astia or Velvia?

Eric, it is simple: Velvia and an enhancing filter, then two tabs of acid and bay at the moon in the morning. :eek:

[roteague]

Eric, it is simple: Velvia and an enhancing filter, then two tabs of acid and bay at the moon in the morning. :eek:

Like this:

http://www.visionlandscapes.com/Images/AU4083A.jpg


Blazing Dawn, Great Ocean Road, Apollo Bay, Victoria, Australia. I rarely use an enhancing filter, but the sunrise combined with Velvia 100F made it a natural.

[Eric James]

Eric, it is simple: Velvia and an enhancing filter, then two tabs of acid and bay at the moon in the morning. :eek:

Ya never know - T-max and the same might do the trick...or we can just wait for the new Velvia:D

Nice photo roteague!

[Neal Shields]

I have a friend that is a fanatic about this stuff.

In the old days color film was manufactured to expect noon at Rodchest6er N.Y..

At least "daylight" film. As I remember it is balanced to 5800 K. Maybe now it is color balanced to noon in Tokyo.

If the film doesn't get the light it expects, because the light shining on your subject isn't 5800k it is going to shift the colors and may not shift them the same for each color, so getting back to reality isn't going to be easy.

You can buy a color temperature meter and a set of correcting filters so that you give the film what it expects. If you meter says that the light is 4800k, you simply filter it to 5800k and your are good to go.

You might also use film that is "balanced" closer to sunset, i.e. tungsten.

My friend tells me that in the days of B&W movies, they even measured color temperature and corrected it for the B&W film because they never knew what scenes they were going to splice together and if they didn't have it dead on it would look funny when they made the splice.

[Eric James]

Thanks for redirecting the tread - with the recent contributions I was afraid that it might end up in the lounge.

This is an informative post for me. Recently in another thread I was asked, "why on Earth are you using warming filters" if your images become digitized. I respected the advise, but it made me feel uneasy - not in part because I've spent sooooo much on the darn things. Your post suggest that color temperature adjustment filters - when used to match the emulsion's design - will result in a more accurate representation of color.

[Rory_5244]

That's one great shot, Robert! Did you use a GND?

[roteague]

That's one great shot, Robert! Did you use a GND?

Thanks Rory. Yes, I used a 2 stop split neutral density, with a Tiffen Enhancing Filter, on a 90mm Nikkor. The hardest part is that it was cold outside, and after spending the night at this spot I was ready for the sunrise. This was also the only decent shot I got in the two days I spent driving the Great Ocean Road - it was raining the rest of the time.

[Bruce Watson]

Your post suggest that color temperature adjustment filters - when used to match the emulsion's design - will result in a more accurate representation of color.

In my experience (and I'm hardly an expert) this is true mostly for transparency film. Negative film seems to be much less effected. I say this because I find myself making very similar color corrections to 5x4 160PortraVC that I've scanned, whether I made the photograph at dawn or at noon.

I've read about this in other places too. For example it seems that architecture photographers often like to use negative film because it does so much better in the mixed lighting they often encounter.

I don't know why. Just seems to be the case.

For more on this, Charles Cramer had an article discussing the use of warming filters with transparency film in View Camera a couple of years back I think.

[Rory_5244]

That's real commitment to get the shot, Robert.

[roteague]

That's real commitment to get the shot, Robert.

Thanks Rory, I wish I could say that was the primary motivation, but it wouldn't be the truth. Actually, I was almost out of petrol, and was afraid I wouldn't be able to find a station late at night, so I pulled over at what looked like a promising spot, and this was the result the next morning. :D However, I have spent the night in a likely spot for at other times.

[Alan Davenport]

Too many good (and correct, even if different) responses to the intent of the OP here, so I'll just go back to the original question: At sunset what color is the landscape?

Answer: The landscape is the same color it always was (and is.) The color of the light has changed.

See? This is the classic "Which came first, the chicken or the egg" scenario. You can't solve the equation, so just make the print that makes you happiest!

[ljb0904]

Recently in another thread I was asked, "why on Earth are you using warming filters" if your images become digitized. I respected the advise, but it made me feel uneasy - not in part because I've spent sooooo much on the darn things.

Seems to me, unless you have enough lattitude in the film so you don't end up "clipping" the color responses, color correcting in the computer can only go so far. I've regretted not using a warming filter in shady situations when I wanted warmer color because (at least with velvia) there's not enough lattitude to shift the colors back digitally. In post processing on the computer, it can be very difficult to warm things back up and keep the image natural looking because the information just isn't there on the film.

Just because you digitize an image doesn't mean you shouldn't expose film correctly in the first place. I think the advice you got is garbage.