How can I preserve the warm look of incandescent or sunset light instead of neutralizing it with white balance?
Asked 4/30/2020
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When I set a custom/manual white balance using white paper on cameras like the Sony HXR-MC2500 or Nikon D80, warm incandescent light turns into a neutral white look and the scene loses its color mood. I’d like to keep the warm feel of tungsten lighting and dawn/sunset rather than having the camera remove it. What’s the right way to do this? Are there useful Kelvin settings to start with for incandescent light and for sunrise/sunset, and can this also be adjusted later in software like Photoshop?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
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I believe there is a misconception here.
Doing a manual white balance, will not preserve the look of the lighting, it will try to neutralize the light and thus the rendition of color.
How white balance works
If you have a room with warm (incandescent) light, the light has a very yellow/orangish tone to it. Any object that is reflecting the light will absorb different wave-lenghts of light to various degrees. Thus we perceive its color.
If the light that hits the object is very yellow, the reflected light will share this trait.
To create a correction in white balance, you shine the existing light onto a neutral object (white or neutral grey) and tell the camera that this should be the new reference for neutral color. This way the camera is able to calculate the offset and compensate for it.
A formerly yellowish mood will now look neutral.
Note: This will not work completely if you have mixed light. This is the reason why you can change the color temp on many lights. You can then either match the temp to have the same look - or set them differently to set a special mood (e.g. a warm bedside lamp and a very blue light from a window to indicate night).
What of you want to preserve the mood?
Then override the white balance by setting the color temperature manually to whatever setting you like. On a mirrorless camera, this is quite easy, as you can see the preview. Also if you shoot raw, you can completely override the white balance in post production - and fine-tune the mood with that.
This enables you e.g. to make a mid day image to look like sunset - and use the color temperature as another means of telling a story.
Originally by user88965. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user88965
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes — what you’re seeing is expected. A custom white balance made from white paper tells the camera to treat that warm light as neutral, so it removes the orange/yellow cast. That’s great for accurate neutral whites, but it also removes the atmosphere of incandescent light or sunset.
So first decide your goal:
- neutral/accurate color: set WB to match the light
- preserve the warm mood: use a cooler WB than the light source, or adjust later in post
Typical starting points:
- incandescent/tungsten: about 3200K if you want whites to look white
- daylight: about 5500K
If you shoot indoor tungsten at 3200K, the warmth is largely corrected away. To keep some of that warmth, use a higher Kelvin setting more like daylight, or fine-tune by eye. The same idea applies to dawn/sunset: don’t neutralize the scene if you want to keep its warm color.
If your camera allows direct Kelvin selection, that’s usually the easiest manual method. Otherwise use presets and adjust by eye. In Photoshop or RAW processing, white balance can also be changed afterward, which is often the best way to balance accuracy versus mood.
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