Tuesday 14 May 2013

Colour temperature and white balance

Over the last two months I have been experimenting with the camera settings a good deal. And I have been spending a lot of time sitting around reading the manual.
The whole issue of colour, how it is recorded and how it changes according to the temperature of the light is really interesting.

 So some of these experiments have been pretty laid back (!) - but little differences (for example in colour and white balance) can be adjusted in camera..
 ..so that I can really fine tune which colours and tones I want to emphasize...
 ..how the whites appear...
 ..and all this can give each image a subtly different look.


On the other hand, the effects can be dramatic. Taking a custom white balance setting from something blue...
 ..gets some interesting effects.

Or maybe red:

















I like this; it's lots of fun, and something creative to play around with. It also mirrors what is possible in post-production.
I have been learning to use - and experimenting with - software like Aperture, Photoshop and Lightroom (above) over the last few weeks. The adjustments that can be made are very sophisticated, with the basic tools in Camera Raw just the beginning.
The effects of colour temperature changes are interesting when you are turning colour shots like this..
50mm, ISO 200, 1/640 at f3.5
..into black and white:
The same shot with a yellow filter and some other processes applied.

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