H
ave you ever wondered why some photographs have a warm, yellowish hue, x while others have a cooler, bluish hue?
This is because light sources emit different colour temperatures; although the human eye is adept at neutralising them automatically, your camera sometimes needs a helping hand.
White balance is so called because it refers to the process of rendering a white object white, despite the colour temperature of the light source. Colour temperature is measured in Kelvin (K) –direct sunlight is roughly 5,000K, for example, and our Nikon D800 and Z 6II cameras capture a range from 2,500K (very warm) to 10,000K (very cool). But you don’t have to know what the various Kelvin values mean – all you have to do is set your camera up for success.
You could argue that the ‘correct’ white balance doesn’t really exist, since the perfect colour temperature of an image will differ from photographer to photographer and the aesthetic they’re trying to achieve. But at least if you know how to balance the colour temperature of a scene, you have a solid base to work from during editing. This brings us to an important point: the colour temperature of raw files can be altered at any time without damaging image quality, so if you don’t like what you see, you can always change it.
So why worry about white balance at all? Because getting it right in-camera saves time in the edit – and knowing the theory might just help you become a better photographer.
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