Learn to adjust your White Balance (WB) to Different Lighting Conditions
Shooting in daylight is the best setting for good lighting in photography. Although we get the shift in tones from morning till evening, the lighting of the scene still manages to look natural and it should as our eyes and perception of colours and tones around us is best suited with these lighting conditions. This is also the case with digital cameras.
Without a doubt, a large quantity of the pictures we take will be in daylight. This isn’t a problem as our cameras work best within natural light’s range of hues. It is when we need additional lighting and rely back on artificial light that the issues of colour cast and wrong hues start to take shape.
First let me just explain how we each perceive lighting conditions. Our eyes and brains are the most efficient tool there is when it comes down to White Balance (WB adjustments). We almost always perceive the colour of an item accurately even in tungsten lighting which cast warm orange lights on the scene. This is because although a piece of white paper may look yellowish under a tungsten light, our eyes work in tandem with our brain to fix this and make it right in a split second without us having to think about it.
Certain shots are so saturated in a certain colour hue, trying to tone it
down could result in the loss of details and colour information. So, it is still
best to get it right out of your camera.
Our camera is not able to adjust to lighting conditions perfectly. A camera that totally has no WB capabilities will capture a scene directly as it is captured with the light that enters the camera. On the other hand a camera with WB will, through a series of colour calculations, decide the overall colour cast of the scene and try to convert this to a neutral cast. Though in general shooting, this may work, but it extreme conditions, the camera is prone to errors in calculations.
A camera cannot decide based on what a photographer is trying to shoot and make a calculative adjustment to make it perfect for that particular composition. Take this for example: When shooting a picture of your subject against a field of yellow and orange flowers, your camera may decide that the large quantity of warm colours in the picture is due to the lighting conditions. Therefore, it will adjust to a much cooler setting, dampening the strong impact of the colours of the flowers.
Does this make you understand why sometimes your picture doesn’t turn out as colourful or as bright as how you saw it in person?
To counter this, take a couple of seconds of your photography session to adjust the WB to manual setting and take readings or shoot adjustment pictures which you can use to correct your WB.
Shooting in Artificial Lighting
One of the main problems with shooting artificially lit scene is poor lighting colour which can create strong colour cast. This is more evident with your basic digital camera which may not have a better program of handling a wide variety of WB tasks.
This colour cast does not only envelop the scene in colours that are too warm (or too cold), but ultimately they can overwhelm other colours in your scene and the problem becomes evident when you try to apply a digital filter to neutralize this colour cast. You will see that more often than not for heavily colour cast you will end up with a desaturated picture.
If you are not sure about the lighting conditions or the best setting for the
scene, turn on your flash! That leaves behind the guesswork and make a
well lit picture in natural colour tones.
Fluorescent Light
One of the most difficult lights to balance is fluorescent light. This is because there are many different types of fluorescent light tubes ranging from cool to warm white. When a tube wears out, it might be replaced with a tube of different colour temperature. To the naked eye, all the tubes may look the same yet they are in fact giving off different temperatures of colours. In film as well as how a camera’s sensor is made to capture lights, light from a standard fluorescent lit scene may look greenish.
Tungsten Light
You can to a certain extent, do a manual balancing on tungsten lighting to neutralize the colour cast created by the warm light. Although at times the effect of a warmly lit scene is intentional, at times you may be required to document the scene in good neutral lighting. Tungsten lights indoor generally do not emit enough light to illuminate the scene properly.
Daylight mixed with artificial light
Sometimes with two different light sources, such as tungsten light and daylight or fluorescent light and daylight, the only practical solution may be to expose for the greater light source. A more elaborate method – when shooting in a room lit by tungsten light with windows that let in daylight is to place light balancing material over the windows to convert the daylight to the same balance as the tungsten light.
In mixed light situations that combine daylight with tungsten, the warmth of the tungsten light can add a mellow tone. If the situation is one which combines daylight, tungsten and flash, the trick is to make all of these elements balance. The best method to achieve this is to work out the exposure for the daylight coming in through the windows.
There are a number of situations where warm (or cold) colour hues created
by certain lights can give a certain pleasing mood to the scene. Don’t discount
that fact on the account of getting the right coloured scene.
Now that you know the basics, let your creativity roam!
If you are interested to know more, you may want to read: Let There be Light
If you want to know more about flash photography, read : Flash It!
If you want love saturation even more, read : Using Filters!
Last edited by sharpshooter
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