What is the Purkinje Shift in photography?

Low light

You may have noticed that your eye works a bit differently at night than at daytime. Due to the way your eye is constructed, the colors red, yellow and orange will appear less bright relative to blue and green colors, when perceived in low light.

This can lead to some frustrations as a photographer, as your camera does not follow this logic and simply register the light as is. So what you remember to have seen at night may not be what you find when you open the image in your post processing software! The solution is to color edit the images to make the red, yellow and orange less intense so the image is better aligned to how you remember the scene.

Low light image.
At night your eyes will be better able to see green and blue relative to red and yellow.

Related reading

What is light falloff in photography?

What is hard light vs soft light?

 

Author: Frederik Bøving

Frederik is a photographer, blogger and youtuber living in Denmark in the Copenhagen region. Outdoor photography is the preference, but Frederik can also be found doing flash photography applied to product shoots and stills.

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