When a crystal is composed of crystallites with varying lattice orientation, topographic contrast arises: In plane-wave topography, only selected crystallites will be in diffracting position, thus yielding diffracted intensity only in some parts of the image. Upon sample rotation, these will disappear, and other crystallites will appear in the new topograph as strongly diffracting. In white-beam topography, all misoriented crystallites will be diffracting simultaneously (each at a different wavelength). However, the exit angles of the respective diffracted beams will differ, leading to overlapping regions of enhanced intensity as well as to shadows in the image, thus again giving rise to contrast.
While in the case of tilted crystallites, domain walls, grain boundaries etc. orientation contrast occurs on a macroscopic scale, it can also be generated more locally around defects, e.g. due to curved lattice planes around a dislocation core.