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.

Judging Colour Temperature 1

For this exercise I took three separate images; the first in the middle of a clear day (although turned away from the sun to avoid squinting), then at the same time in shade beneath some trees, then finally on a different day with a low sun. I generally keep my camera set to 'shade' white balance, as this generally warms my images. As I shoot RAW it was easy to adjust this setting after the fact in lightroom to daylight white balance. The differences in the colour temperature of the light is clear to see:

 

The light in the first image is very bright with strong highlights, but colourless. There is also high contrast in this image due to the shadows cast by the direct light.

 

This image has a much 'cooler' feel as it is in shade, and the light hitting the subject is reflected from the blue sky. In contrast to the first image, this one is very low contrast due to there being no direct sunlight. This is an example of where the 'shade' white balance in the camera or image software would produce a more asthetically-pleasing image by increasing the colour temperature to 'warm' the image. In lightroom, this image with daylight white balance setting has a temperature of 5500k, but with the shade setting the software ups this to 7500k.

With a low sun the particles in the atmosphere scatter the blue wavelengths of light leaving the orange/reddish wavelengths. This is an attractive time of day for photography, often called the 'golden hour'. This is also a high contrast time of day, with long shadows.

Conclusion

Without the camera adjusting the white balance, it is clear to see, when the images are presented side by side, the colour differences of the light. This can evidently have a big impact on your image, depending on the type of image you want to make.