Judging colour temperature

 

White balance on daylight:

A sunny afternoon, sitting under the shade of a tree gave me the perfect opportunity to start the exercise on judging colour temperature. I chose my reluctant daughter as a subject and coaxed her from the rock she was perched on, reading to get my full sunlight shot. The strong sunlight has enhanced the shadows created by her furrowed brow but as far as I remember, her skin looks pretty much as I saw it on the day.

Having read the information accompanying this exercise, I expected the photo taken in shade to appear blue and the one in low sun to appear orange. However, I don’t think this is quite the result achieved in the following images. When I edit a RAW image, the options for changing white balance are to change the temperature, with sliders merging from blues to oranges or the tint, in which the sliders merge from green to pink. My photo taken in the shade appears to me to have a green tint rather than the blue I was expecting. I found that in order to get a better colour, I had to increase the temperature slightly but make a more extreme adjustment to the tint.

 

For the low sun image, I took two separate images, the first in the evening by the sea as the sun was beginning to set. In this image, Amber’s skin appears slightly pinker than I remember which could be combated by adjusting the tint slider.  

The next evening we had a view of a stunning sunset from our campsite so I asked Amber to pose yet again so that I could get a comparison. The effects of the low light has again, resulted in a more pink image than required. In this image however, I feel that Amber’s right cheek has a pink glow, whereas her right cheek seems to be a little blue. This could be due to all of the red light coming from the right. I have noticed whilst driving many times than whilst having a brilliant orange sunset in front of me, I can often see a very blue sky in my rear-view mirrors. This variation in light could create difficulty in finding the perfect white balance for such an image.

 

White balance on auto:

As I had such a portable subject, I decided to use Amber’s face to complete part two of the exercise. The next step was to set the white balance to ‘auto’ which would enable the camera to decide on the setting by reading the available light. My expectation was that this would give an ideal white balance for the subject in all situations; however this was not the case.

The first image, taken in full sun came out just a touch more blue/green than I remembered. Although this shot was taken in full midday sun, the colour temperature of this image read as 4700, whereas my camera’s setting for daylight is 5150. I can only assume from this that my camera did not view the scene as completely neutral but it was compensating for a colour cast due to the surroundings.

The image taken in the shade which had appeared green on the daylight setting appeared much more blue on auto. In this situation, I might have expected my camera to recognise the shade and opt for a temperature of 6850 which is its setting for shade. Instead, it opted for a much lower temperature of 4400 making me assume that my camera thought we were indoors. The only explanation I can think of for this is that we were under a tree with a small lake to one side and an electrically lit stage to the other. These factors could have had an impact on the setting given.

The third image is the closest to natural skin colour of all of the shots taken on the auto setting. It does, have a pinkish tinge but I feel the temperature is just right.

The fourth image has a slightly more blue hue than I would have expected. As suggested above, this scene would have been difficult to assess, manually or in camera as a result of the multi-coloured sky.

 

White balance on shade:

The last part of this exercise was to set the white balance to shade in camera and take the same shots again. My camera’s setting for shade is 6850, which has the effect of creating a more orange image.

The daylight image taken on the shade setting resulted in a much too orange image.

 

 

The image taken in shade is the one I would have expected to be correct, however the result is far too green, still with a hint of orange. Having studied the three images taken in shade and thought about the way my camera reacted to this situation, I feel the need for a retake. I plan to take another three shots in shade in the near future, making sure that there are no other contributing elements such as water or nearby electric lighting.

 

The first low sun image appears to orange, indicating a higher colour temperature than necessary.

 

The second low sun image is fairly close to the colours I would expect. The shade setting has increased the temperature on the left side of Amber’s face which was essentially in shade. The right side of her face shows an orange glow which gives the impression of a sunset coming from this side without actually seeing it. I feel this is the most successful of my images on this setting.

 

This exercise has taught me a lot about white balance as well as showing that it is not always best to leave such decisions to the camera’s auto setting.