{"id":1093,"date":"2017-04-11T12:04:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T12:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2017-04-11T13:42:54","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T13:42:54","slug":"how-daylight-white-balance-can-make-you-a-better-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/how-daylight-white-balance-can-make-you-a-better-photographer","title":{"rendered":"How Daylight White Balance Can Make You a Better Photographer."},"content":{"rendered":"
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For the past year or so, I\u2019ve been doing a special experiment with the way that I shoot photos: I\u2019ve been working almost exclusively with Daylight White Balance. Crazy, right? Especially when these days the auto white balance setting seems to do such a great job. Plus when you consider how easy post-production is these days, it almost makes no sense. But indeed it does. Shooting a bit more restraint lets you think in a different way.<\/p>\n

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Most Film is Rated to Daylight<\/strong><\/p>\n

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So the reason why I first began to work in solely Daylight white balance is because it\u2019s what most film out there is rated at. Film and daylight are rated at 5500 kelvin\u2013which most cameras<\/a> have as some sort of preset default setting. If you\u2019ve shot with a lot of film but haven\u2019t developed the film yourself, then you\u2019re not exactly understanding how colors and color theory works. But if you shoot digital and use daylight white balance, you\u2019ll begin to understand how it all works.<\/p>\n

Think of it like this; when you yourself move from\u00a0one area vs the other your eyes see colors and try to find a natural white point. So they adapt. Your camera<\/a> is too. But with a locked white balance, you\u2019re stuck at one setting. So now you\u2019ll need to perhaps move to a place where you can find more desirable light.<\/p>\n

In turn, this can help you with editing later on because you start to better understand how colors work.<\/p>\n

Portrait Photographers Will Learn to Understand Skin Tones So Much Better<\/h3>\n

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I started to talk about understanding colors more. So here\u2019s where I\u2019m really starting to get into it. The photo above of my buddy Chelsea Northrup was shot with sunlight shining on her face. The sunlight is being diffused by clouds and the light is coming in from the side of a boat. Of course, my camera<\/a> was set to daylight white balance.<\/p>\n

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Now here\u2019s Gordon Laing from Camera<\/a> Labs with the same white balance but at just around the time that the golden hour is turning into blue hour. Much different tonality due to the way that the lighting is working.<\/p>\n

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Now here\u2019s Daylight white balance with a lot of ambient light at night. Much different, right? Again, this all has to do with the way that light changes.<\/p>\n

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Also be sure to keep all this in mind during the Golden Hour.<\/p>\n

Landscape Photographers Will Understand Light Much Better<\/h3>\n

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Building on everything that I\u2019ve said about skin tones and color and portrait photography, the same thing can easily be applied to landscape photography<\/a>. For example, this image above was shot with slightly shady lighting.<\/p>\n

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On the other hand, there is more or less direct sunlight behind a cloud<\/a> in this photo. So again, daylight white balance gives us a scene that seems honestly much closer to what our eyes try to create.<\/p>\n

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And as you can see, in some situations at night Daylight white balance can look pretty fantastic.<\/p>\n

Strobist Photographers Will Have Higher Reliability<\/h3>\n

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Here\u2019s my favorite part about all these tips: if you\u2019re a strobist photographer, know that your flash is balanced to daylight. So it\u2019s always going to emit the same colored light that you get from pure sunlight. What that means though is that when you bounce the flash output off of surfaces, it will create some weird and odd colors.<\/p>\n

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For example, this is what you get when you use a red gel with a flash.<\/p>\n

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Daylight-flash-outside-at-night-mixed-lighting<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

These two examples are what happens when you bounce flash output off of warmer surfaces. Red brick walls would create red flashes. But orange and others create, well, orange light.<\/p>\n

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It Has a Very Cinematic Look To It<\/h3>\n
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Model: Natalie Margiotta<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Lastly, the reason why I\u2019ve really be liking Daylight white balance recently also has to do with the fact that it has a very cinematic look. If you\u2019ve got Netflix<\/a> and you watch DareDevil, Iron Fist, and even a load of movies out there you\u2019ll see very specific colors. That\u2019s mostly due to daylight white balances. In many situations, the lighting will look very cool unless it\u2019s a night scene.<\/p>\n

If not for any other reason, the cinematic look of daylight white balance should really compel you to try it out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past year or so, I\u2019ve been doing a special experiment with the way that I shoot photos: I\u2019ve been working almost exclusively with Daylight White Balance. Crazy, right? Especially when these days the auto white balance setting seems to do such a great job. Plus when you consider how easy post-production is these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography-tips","tag-white-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097,"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cameraexchangestore.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}