One of my early
memories from when I first became interested in photography and was
experimenting with my first film SLR was being shocked by the extreme colour
cast from a some pictures I took under tungsten lighting. The abiding thing
this experience taught me was to be wary of how our eyes can compensate for
different lighting situations and how the camera will not do this. Since the
advent of digital photography however, white/colour balance has become less of
an issue, especially if photographs are shot in RAW as the colour balance can
be altered post capture. (I wonder however if this causes any problems - for
example, is there a degradation in quality doing this versus setting white
balance at the time of capture.)
As I always shoot in
RAW mode I only ever have my camera set to automatic white balance. I find this
gives a neutral result most of the time, however, I always experiment with
white balance as this can significantly alter the mood of a photograph - higher
colour temperatures giving a cooler/bluer result and lower settings giving a
warmer/red/orange effect. White balance can also significantly effect colour
saturation in an image and perception of exposure.
I skipped the first
part of this exercise which called for photographs to be taken using different
white balance settings in sunny, cloudy and shady situations as this is
something I am familiar with already as described above. The second part of the
project interested me however as this called for photographs to be taken in
mixed lighting situations. The pictures I have chosen are taken outside my
house at dusk with a streetlamp in shot. The different colour temperatures of
the sky and the lamp give interesting results
All of these images
were shot in RAW format and the Kelvin reading here is taken from Lightroom
without any processing, interestingly the amount indicated was different to the
one my camera manual gave.
Automatic White Balance:
7350
Kelvin (-23 tint)
Firstly I wanted to
compare how my camera rendered the scene with the automatic white balance
setting. This is pretty close to how I remember the scene looking with the sky
being grey/blue and the orange of the streetlamp illuminating the scene. The
streetlamp itself is rendered white.
Incandescent:
2950
Kelvin (-3 tint)
This setting has
given the light source the appearance of white light, the orange cast from the
street lamp is virtually eliminated and the sky is a dramatic, saturated blue.
The centre of the light appears pure white as does the 'halo' around it. This also
makes the light and the sky contrast more and the light appears to be brighter
while the fence and grass appears much darker.
Fluorescent:
3950
Kelvin (+30 tint)
A much redder
element is added here although the blue of the sky is maintained. The light has
a more pink than orange tint.
Daylight:
5000K
(-6 tint)
This image appears
much brighter than the previous 2, the sky is much more muted and grey rather
than blue. The cast from the lamp has a warm orange feel.
Cloudy:
5700K
(-8 tint)
Very similar to the
daylight setting, the main difference is an apparent increase in brightness.
Flash:
6100K
(-6 tint)
There is a slight
difference in the perceived brightness here in the sky and grass. The grass
appears slightly less orange and more green.