CONTAINS EMBEDDED ANIMATIONS - DOWNLOAD FOR FULL EXPERIENCE! A quick guide to colour temperature when taking photos

2.  We see the world in many different tints of light
 The problem is that our brains adjust what we see
to filter out these tints, so we are often unaware
that they exist at all...

3. Consider a summer’s day:
 We might have a red dawn glow to begin with…
 By noon, when the sun is high, we have bright
yellow…
 It might rain later, softening the light through grey
clouds…
 Before returning to a red sunset...

5. Things get more
complex when we add
artificial lighting (light
bulbs, etc...) into the
mix:

7.  The reason that pictures have an orange tint with
light bulbs and blue with fluorescent lights is
because different lights have different colour
temperatures
 This is a huge topic – for now just accept that
different lighting gives off different tints

8.  And all the time our
brain is ‘adjusting’ our
perception of these
changing tints:

9.  Unfortunately a camera is not as clever as our
brains
 It has no idea what colour light it is filming in
(despite advances in automatic sensors). This
usually produces some pretty horrendous tints

10.  Therefore you need to tell your camera what tint of
light it is filming in
 This is known as White Balancing

11.  White Balance works on the fact that all colours
can be produced from pure white light (think of
Newton and his prisms):
Pure White
Light...
...can be split into a
rainbow of colours
(With apologies to Pink Floyd!)

12.  So if we tell a camera what
white looks like in a given
light, it can work out what
every other colour should look
like. This produces accurate
colours, especially natural
skin tones:

13. The Golden Rule:
 White Balancing is dead easy to do and must be
done at every new location
 At the very least use Auto or one of the preset
modes

14.  Simply find the Manual White Balance control on
your camera (but don’t press it yet). Then get
somebody to hold up a sheet of white paper:
Camera
White Card

15.  Zoom in so that the white paper completely fills
the screen:
 ...then press the Manual White Balance button or
whatever option your camera has

16.  The biggest problem you will face is finding the
White Balance control
 Every camera has a different way of setting the
White Balance – some have buttons, some use an
on-screen menu, and some set the WB at the
moment they are switched on! Good Luck!