Know your stuff
Understanding colour temperature is key to creating the right mood and colour for your images
Ever shot a landscape with beautiful, warm tones early in the morning, only to find that your image lacks feeling and warmth? Or shot a bird against a stunning purple flower, only to find the image washed out and the bird a weird colour? This happens because of the way the camera reads light and automatically tries to balance the colour of light back to neutral, clean white light. This results in a dulling of colour. Every light source has a specific colour, be it the sun, a candle or a fluorescent light. In photography, the different colours of light are measured as degrees Kelvin – the warmer the light, the lower the degrees Kelvin; the bluer the light, the higher the degrees Kelvin. A candle’s light is about 3 200K, white flash is around 5 100K, shade or an overcast sky is around 7 000K while clear blue sky is 10 000K. Auto white balance works well for a lot of environments but will cause problems with scenes where most of the frame is filled by a general hue (such as when shooting something up close). Here’s how to fix it: • Set your colour temperature (Kelvin) for the scene you are shooting (most cameras have Kelvin presets on the body, otherwise set it manually via the menu). Play around and see your images transform. • When setting Kelvin for the light source, if you set it at the ‘correct’ temperature the light will be brought back to white light – so, if shooting a sunset (4 500K) and you set the camera to 4 500K, you will lose the warmth. Set it higher to keep the warmth, and lower to maintain the cooler temperature.