Much of the west coast woke to dark orange skies this morning as devastating smoke blocked the sun from hundreds of fires in California, Oregon and Washington.
If, like many of us, you've packed your phone to capture the spooky scene in a strange year that's just getting weird and strange, you may have noticed that your phone's camera isn't quite capturing the Blade Runner hue. But why?
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While our eyes see an eerie orange glow, the images from your phone are likely to appear more desaturated and grayer. That's because your smartphone's camera is just too smart.
By design, the camera does all of the hard photo work for you, making thousands of decisions and corrections without your knowledge. She does everything "right", but not always real.
@ Jamesco How do I adjust the white balance of my eyeballs? Woke up and everything is yellow
- christopher heppner (@ hepp76) September 9, 2020
This is due to the software on your phone's camera.
Apple's senior vice president of global marketing, Phil Schiller, called Apple's new Deep Fusion image processing system "Computational Photography Mad Science". Like Google's camera on the pixel, the feature uses machine learning to decipher images and create better looking shots.
A technique called HDR now merges multiple shots and even selects individual pixels to create an overly real version of the world. Google Pixel phones night vision and Apple's night mode almost impossible makes dark night shots better. The iPhone's "portrait mode" adds an invented blur to the backgrounds. Apps brighten the eyes and smooth the skin. It's not real. But what is real?
The first 20 years of digital photography was all about hardware. Bigger and better sensors brought more megapixels and more data. In recent years, however, the industry has changed from hardware-controlled to software-controlled. Most sensors are big enough - with lots of megapixels that provide lots of data - to make your pictures look good. In essence, phone cameras are now capturing whatever data the hardware provides, and Manipulate it to make your pictures betterwithout you having to do anything.
One of the simple (and usually useful) tweaks the default camera app makes on most mobile devices is correcting the White balance of photos. The camera detects the color temperature of your light source, ideally removing unrealistic color casts and balancing everything out to ensure that objects that are actually white appear white in your photos.
Our eyes, or of course, make these adjustments to "white" in various lighting scenarios very efficiently, but your camera's automatic white balance often struggles to get it just right. This setting of making everything appear more "natural" and similar to what your eyes see makes it very difficult for the camera to capture that smoke-filled wildfire sky in the same way that your eyes do.
The trick is to manually override the color correction by switching to an advanced camera app that gives you more choices when taking pictures. As you move away from the auto settings, you make your own decisions and (hopefully) better pictures in the unusual circumstances. Computers are great, but sometimes human free will can't keep up.
Two of my favorite apps for more detailed customizations are the Hallide app (iPhone only, $ 8.99) and Adobe Lightroom (iPhone and Android, free). Both are powerful professional-level camera apps that allow many manual controls and functions Take RAW images.
If you override the camera's default automatic controls and set the white balance color temperature to the Daylight setting, the eerie orange glow will be more accurate. This white balance setting is usually indicated by a sun icon on the camera apps. Not far away on the white balance color temperature scale is the "Cloudy" setting, designed by a small cloud that also gives you a more realistic, deeper orange fire sky.
If you can take pictures in RAW in an app like Hallide and manually control the white balance number in an editing app like Lightroom, the sweet spot in the daylight cloud zone is in the 5500 to 7500 Kelvin range.
So remember: a phone's camera is more than just a push of a button. While software tools like Smart HDR and Night Mode make the camera an incredible tool in your pocket, you don't always take it at face value. Ultimately, the rules of photography are the same as ever. All you have to do is learn to make the most of these great new tools.
