Today’s Post by Joe Farace with Barry Staver
Light may just be light but it’s not always the same color as you might think it is. When making photographs, many of us typically think in terms of daylight as being the “proper time” for making photographic exposures and this means that many photo ops at night or late in the day are often overlooked.
They shouldn’t be but even the colors of daylight are not the same. Most people look at the golden hour and see the beauty of the subject, no more and no less. To work successfully in low light, we need to know more about the nature of light so we can digitally capture images that others merely give a fleeting look.
How I made this shot: Photographing in museums, such as the Unser Racing Museum in Albuquerque where I made the above image, can be a challenge because of the kind of mixed lighting conditions that exist in such places. Exposure with a Canon EOS Rebel T3 with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens was 1/50 sec at f/8 at ISO 6400, with white balance set at AWB but some minor color cleanup was necessary in Photoshop using the indispensable iCorrect EditLab Pro plug-in. Understanding the concepts behind White Balance and the many options that are available to digital photographers make sure that this colors of Indy racer are correct.
Factoids about light: The color temperature emitted by light sources is measured in degrees on the Kelvin (K) scale. The sun on a clear day at noon is 5500 degrees K. On an overcast day the color temperature of light rises to 6700 degrees K, while you will experience 9000 degrees K in open shade on a clear day. When we photograph a sunrise, its color temperature may be 1800 degrees. Lights used by videographers or the tungsten bulbs used in so-called “hot lights” have a Kelvin temperature of 3200 degrees. The light from household lamps are close to that color temperature and measure about 2600 degrees Kelvin.
Barry Staver and Joe are co-authors of Better Available Light Digital Photography that’s out-of-print with new copies available from Amazon for $21.88 or used copies starting only $1.99, as I write this.