Every source of light has a colour temperature. The human eye can adapt to these changes and they can be a challenge to perceive. Sunrise and sunset present many different tones that fascinate amateur and professional photographers. There are subtle variations to sunlight throughout the day and an awareness of ambient light sources is of paramount importance for a photographer. Colour temperature is recorded in Kelvin (K) and the scale of visible light varies from 0 to 10 000K. The following are useful benchmarks for general lighting conditions:
3500K Morning / evening sun
The white balance (WB) setting on a camera allows a photographer to capture accurate colours or produce photographs with creative flare. When shooting RAW, WB is irrelevant because it may be corrected in postproduction. A grey card should be photographed in each lighting condition to act as a reference for the temperature and tint of the colours in the frame. My camera is a Nikon D750 and it has several WB settings. In these two photographs, my friend Martina appears in sunlight and then shadow. The colour of the surrounding concrete is exactly the same. In Auto WB the sunlight shot appears yellower and the shadow one is bluer.
Auto WB, f/8.0, 1/1000, ISO 100
Auto WB, f/2.8, 1/500, ISO 100
At university, I photographed a hallway using the full range of WB settings on my camera and then recorded the temperature and tints that they produced in Lightroom. My results were as follows:
Auto, Temperature 5250, Tint 15
Incandescent, Temperature 3000, Tint 0
Fluorescent, Temperature 4100, Tint 40
Direct sunlight, Temperature 5300, Tint 10
Cloudy, Temperature 6200, Tint 0
Shade, Temperature 8100, Tint 15
