Judging Colour Temperature 2

The brief for this exercise was to take three more images similar to those for the previous part of the exercise, and this time show each image at different white balance settings. To save time I decided to use the same images as before; as I shoot in RAW format changing settings such as white balance in post production is the same as if I had changed the setting before shooting the image.

Image Taken in Daylight

 

 

Daylight WB Setting

 

Shade WB Setting

  

Auto WB Setting

Of the three images, I think I still prefer the original, which is at the 'correct' setting of daylight. The shade setting makes the skin tone too orange, and auto cools the image down too much, taking any colour out of the skin.

Image Taken in Shade

 Daylight WB Setting

 Shade WB Setting

 

Auto WB Setting

Again, the 'correct' setting is my favourite of the three; providing warmth to an otherwise very cool image. Interestingly, the auto white balance setting makes the scene even cooler than daylight, making the skin very pale.

Image Taken with a Low Sun

 

Daylight WB Setting

 

Shade WB Setting

 

Auto WB Setting

 For the low sun image, I would choose the 'daylight' version. The shade setting warms up the image even more than it already is, resulting in a very orange effect; I expect my opinion of this would probably change depending on the subject. A sunset scene would probably benefit from this very warm effect, but on skin it just looks unnatural to me. The auto white balance setting takes all of the warmth from the image, probably in an attempt to remove the colour cast. This may well be desirable if I was shooting under incandescent lighting, but not when I'm trying to take advantage of the golden hour!

Conclusion

It was interesting to combine different qualities of light with the different options for white balance in lightroom. I thought the relevant settings for each type of lighting worked well, such as the shade setting for an image taken in the shade, but it also highlighted the creative possibilities of using the 'wrong' white balance setting for any particular image. I was surprised that the auto setting in lightroom was often undesirable, cooling down the image to an unacceptable level. It would be interesting to make a comparison of the camera's auto white balance to lightroom's. It is also worth noting that lightroom allows fine control of white balance with sliders for temperature and tint, so that any of the listed white balance settings can be infinitely fine-tuned.