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Using White Balance Creatively

Using your camera's white balance mode in new and creative ways

Posted: 03/02/2012 - 00:00

Your Pentax digital camera has a setting that automatically measures the colour of the light and sets it so that whites appear white. It's called the white balance and can usually be switched to manual if you need to override the auto setting. And that's what this article is about - the creative use of white balance.

Temperature Light Source
800-1800°K Embers to Candle Flame
2750-3000°K House lightbulbs (40-500w)
3000-3350°K Studio Photoflood bulbs
4100-4150°K Moonlight
5000°K Daylight / electronic flash
6000°K Sun high in sky (noon)
6500-7000°K Overcast daylight
6500°K Computer screen
10,000°K Heavily overcast/shade

First a bit of background. The light around us varies in colour depending on the source. This variation is called colour temperature and is measure in degrees Kelvin. Colour temperature ranges from 800°K, which is the colour of light emitted from fire embers, through to 10,000°K of a heavily overcast day. The colour at the 800°K end of the scale is red and at the 10,000°K end it's blue.

The job of the camera's white balance setting is to detect the approximate colour of the scene and then adjust it so the photograph records with a mid setting of around 5000°K daylight.

This is fine in most circumstances, but occasionally the camera gets it wrong and for this reason there's the option to override. On the Pentax K-5, for example, there are settings for Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Fluorescent light (D, N, W, L), Tungsten light, Flash, CTE. There's also Manual with the option to set colour temperature from 2500 to 10,000K in 100K steps).

Just as a side note here. If you shoot in RAW these settings are not important. White balance can be set after in your RAW editing program, but for those who shoot in jpeg it would be normal practice to get it right in camera. Or being creative getting it wrong can produce better results!

You don't have to set the white balance so it look natural...the wrong setting can be applied to add a colour cast. How white balance works is to measure the colour of the scene and add the necessary filtration to bring it back to that mid day setting. So if the shot is being taken in candle light, the camera will measure the orange and throw in lots of blue filtration to counteract and balance the light.

And that's where we can use this to our advantage. If we set the tungsten light setting in daylight. It will adjust the photo so it's really blue. And if we set to cloudy in daylight it will add a warm hue. So you can change the mood of the photo. Have a go don't do what the camera says. The beauty with digital is you can take a shot and check the result straight away. Do a test and run through all the settings and take a photo at each. You'll notice some only have subtle variations in tone, but that subtle change can be enough to make a model's skin warmer toned, or remove a colour cast in snow, or make a beach scene look a little more tropical.

Here's an example of what the auto setting produced when photographing two wine bottles against a window blind.

Wine bottles against a window blind on auto

And here's the same picture taken with the white balance set to fluorescent light.

Wine bottles against a window blind on fluorescent setting

This is a landscape taken at twilight on the auto setting.

Landscape on auto

And the same shot taken on the shade setting has given the photo an orange glow.

Landscape on shade setting

While on the tungsten setting the picture is much cooler.

Landscape on tungsten setting

Have a go at being creative with white balance and post your results in the Pentax User Gallery.

Members photos with related tags: white,balance

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