How can I photograph the warm yellow color of sunlight on a wall without white balance neutralizing it?

Question

I photographed a patch of warm golden-hour sunlight on a white wall and wanted to preserve the yellow color as I saw it. With auto white balance, the result looked too neutral. I then tried setting a custom white balance using a grey card in the sunlight, and also used Lightroom’s WB picker on the grey card, but both made the image even cooler.

I’m shooting RAW on a Sony NEX-5R. My suspicion is that using a grey card in the warm light tells the camera/software to treat that warm light as neutral, which removes the yellow cast I actually want to keep.

If the goal is to capture the color of the sunlight itself rather than neutralize it, what’s the best approach? Should I avoid grey-card white balance in this case, use a daylight preset, bracket white balance, or adjust color temperature/saturation in post?

user29815 · Answer

In this case, you shouldn't be using a grey card at all. Grey cards (and related devices and and cards) are used as a reference point to make an image's color neutral, as your second two images show, but you don't want neutral, you want warm.

What you need to do is change to color temperature and/or saturation in post processing; changes to color temperature are best done if you are shooting RAW, although they can be made to jpegs.

So for this image, I'd start with the first version, and use a combination of custom color balance and vibrance and/or saturation to make it look like you remember it.

If you want to do it in camera, then you'll just have to play around with custom WB settings; I'd start off with the "Daylight" setting and work from there. WB bracketing wouldn't hurt.

How can I photograph the warm yellow color of sunlight on a wall without white balance neutralizing it?

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