Photography blooper #1

Over the holidays with family I had more of an excuse to use my newish DSLR than usual, in the way of time and subjects. To my shame I forgot it the first day we went out to Coogee and Watson's Bay, so made do with the phone that day. Then later in the week I was using it and one day I changed the battery, as you do, and then took some shots at Balmoral, without paying much attention to the screen playback, because it was too glary to see it at any rate ... So when I got home I was rather miffed and disappointed to discover that all the shots were decidedly blue.

I'd been using it in P mode, because I just wanted to take happy snaps as it was the middle of the day and not ideal lighting anyway, but I wanted to spot focus more easily. So I thought the camera must be malfunctioning somewhere. When I investigated the problem later pictures were fine in fully "auto" mode but horrible in any other. When I mentioned this to a friend they suggested the white balance, but I thought 'no, I didn't do anything to the white balance', but I have since checked and somehow, while fiddling about changing the battery, I must have interfered with the white balance setting and pushed it onto "incandescent" in manual modes (it was still set to "auto" in "auto" mode, obviously).

What I was unprepared for though, is the monumental difference this made. Here is a photo comparisons between "Auto" mode and "P" mode with the white balance on "incandescent", from my balcony. (To me, white balance is one of those things I'd rather deal with at the print level, not at the time of taking a photo.)

All was not completely lost as I was able to adjust the photos in iPhoto to some extent, though I don't know that I have managed to get the colours completely true. Here are my corrections. The reason my nieces were getting about with red roses is because as we scrambled over the rocks they actually started washing up out of the sea, which was strangely romantic and provided us with some fun fantasising. I told the youngest one that someone over the sea must love her. And she says 'but how would they know the roses would wash up just as we walked past', and well, that's just the magic isn't it. Only Hollywood has the answer to that.