Judging Colour Temperature 1

Exercise: Judging Colour Temperature (3 Photographs for the 1st Part, 9 for the 2nd)

As I discussed previously in the section Colour of Light, light at different times of the day and under different conditions will have different colours. To understand and demonstrate this theory, this exercise was to take 3 photographs at different times of the day and discuss the findings and differences when the photographs were compared with one another. 

To ensure the results were constant, the White Balance (WB) setting on my Nikon D300 was set to sunny. 

The first photograph was taken shortly after midday on bright October day. 

The second was taken a few hours later once the stone and grass where in full shadow. 

Finally the third photograph was taken around 6pm shortly before sunset. 












As you can see from these three photographs, which as stated were taken with the camera set to a WB setting of sunny, or 5000k are quite different in their appearance.

The first photograph, taken in the middle of the day, shows good contrasts, which you would expect, seeing as the sun was high in the sky creating the shadows from the hedgerow and the stone. The cameras WB setting has captured this scene as near perfect as I can remember. On the kelvin scale noon daylight has a value of 5000k, the same as the cameras setting at the time. 

The second photograph, even though it looked almost the same to the naked eye when I took the photograph, the camera has recorded it with a slightly blue tint. The kelvin scale states the overcast daylight has a value of around 7000k, slightly higher than the 5000k the camera was set to. 

The final photograph taken near to sunset, has a marked orange tint to it. This was apparent to the naked eye at the time of shooting. The kelvin scale gives a value in the region of 2000-3000k for light at sunset/sunrise. 

These series of photographs demonstrate that, as previously discussed, the colour temperature makes a marked difference to the final photograph depending on what time of day and what WB you are using on the camera.