White balance color temperature

peter yip

• March 10, 2014 15:46

I have recently noticed this issue on a shoot, as most of the time we white balance with grey card but on one occasion we decided to push it for a colder look.

in my understanding, a lower kelvin = warmer color, and higher kelvin = colder color.
but for some reason it seems to work in the opposite way?? I am currently running ver 7.1.5

here is an example

5370k
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70498749/5500k.png

3000k
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70498749/3000k.png

8000k
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70498749/8000k.png

or am I just dreaming ?

many thanks
Peter

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  Paul Steunebrink

  • March 10, 2014 17:00

  [quote="NNN634539498662029927" wrote:
  ...
  in my understanding, a lower kelvin = warmer color, and higher kelvin = colder color.
  but for some reason it seems to work in the opposite way??
  
  (...)
  
  or am I just dreaming ?

  
  The rationale behind the Kelvin slider is that you simulate a (white) light source of a certain temperature (expressed in Kelvin, obviously) which was used during capture.
  
  A simple experiment will explain this. Set your camera WB for daylight (5000-5500 K). This will give nice colored images at noon. Now, make an image during sunrise or sunset. We all know that this image will look yellow when adjusted for daylight because the color temperature during capture is much lower (around 4000 K).
  Adjusting the image in CO7 will require you to move the Kelvin slider to the left, to a lower value, down to 4000 K. We now simulate that this image was taken with a light source of 4000 K. This will give us a well color balanced sunset image (leaving it a bit yellow for the mood).

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  peter yip

  • March 10, 2014 17:09

  Thanks a lot

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