Tag: white balance and color temperature

Why color temperature is vital in color photography

Light sources

If you are new to photography, then color temperature may not be the first thing you worry about. There are many other dimensions of photography that demands you attention, ranging from selecting the right camera and lens, to composition and exposure. However, when you have found your feet and start getting the results you want, then white balance and the color temperature of light may start to be one of the more advanced subjects that you want to dive into.

Every light source has a certain color temperature. It is measured in Kelvin, and for reasons beyond me, it is typically on a scale between 2000 and 10000, and to signal it is a value on the Kelvin scale, a “K” is added after the number. So for example candlelight is 2000K whereas an overcast sky is around 6000K. So low values equals more red, high values more blue and in between is white.

You are fast!

No, I don’t write that headline to charm you, but it is a fact that your brain adapts to new light sources with astonishing speed and probably without you noticing. So if you walk from noon daylight (5200K) into a tungsten lit living room (2500K), then you’ll adapt to the new temperature of the light super fast and probably without noticing. And colors will look like they always do, and white will look white, simply because you adapt fast to a new light source. It is really smart design!

Your camera is not so smart

You camera is not so smart. In order for it to record the light in a way where the images that comes out of it look natural (e.g. white looks white), then the camera needs to know the temperature of the light. If it doesn’t, then I can assure you the colors will be strange – white will be yellow and blue will be purple, etc. So you need to tell the camera what color temperature you are shooting at.

Auto white balance

Luckily, most modern cameras has an option named auto white balance where the camera itself reads the light and figures out the color temperature of the ambient light. It works really well in most cases. You can try to play with a manual setting of the white balance, just to get a feel for what happens if the white balance is off and what options this gives you for giving your images a distinct look. If you have ever seen images by Bryan F. Petersson, you can find some amazing images where he gives the night sky a distinct purple look using manual setting of the white balance.

 

What is white balance in photography?

True colors

As strange as it may sound, white is not just white. Subject to the temperature of the light, measured in Kelvin, white is many different shades of yellow! Why is this hard to believe? Because your brain does an amazing job compensating for the color temperature, so that different version of white always appears to be the same white to you.

Unfortunately your camera is not as smart as your brain! Your camera needs to know what the color temperature of the light is in order to reproduce white (and colors) so that it looks credible when you see it in the screen or the print. If the white balance setting is off relative to the temperature of the ambient light, the colors (and the white) in the image will look unnatural. This can be used as a tool for making your images stand out, but for now I just assume that you want your images to look natural.

Auto white balance

Most modern cameras has an auto white balance function that in far most cases will give the technically correct white balance settings. Also, if you shoot in RAW format, the options for adjusting the white balance as part of the post processing work makes the wrong white balance settings less of a catastrophe – of course it is always nicer (and less work!) to get the white balance settings right in camera, but when shooting in RAW, hard work in post can make your images look right.

Manual white balance

You can set the white balance manually also. Typically your camera has two options, either you can go hard core manual and enter the Kelvin value directly (typically between 2500K and 8000K), or you can select between some predefined values such as sunlight, overcast, tungsten, incandescent, and so on. These names are just name for a specific Kelvin value – if you for example have a value on your camera called “overcast”, it is the same as entering a Kelvin value of about 6000K to 6500K.

Several light sources

Recently I was shooting images at a lunch party, where the party was held inside with tungsten light, but the light from an overcast sky seeped through large windows that (unfortunately!) served as a backdrop for many of the images. Although the auto white balance in my camera did it’s best, the mix of two different light sources with two different Kelvin values did not work out well for my images. The people at the party either had a very red color in their faces, or if I adjusted so that they looked more natural, the light from the windows started to look weird. That taught me to be careful mixing different light sources – had I chosen to frame the images differently (without the windows), this would not have happened.

Bottom line

If you are new to photography, I would not worry to much about white balance for starters. Set your camera to auto white balance, and focus on other matters like composition and storytelling. However, if you want to dive more into playing with color temperature and see what it can do for your images, try to study the Kelvin scale and start to set the white balance manually. Once you are comfortable with manual white balance, next step is to play with white balance settings on your camera that do not match the available light! Have fun!