From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Working with color temperature and white balance

Working with color temperature and white balance

From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Working with color temperature and white balance

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Color can be tricky in low light. Your eyes, of course, lose the ability to perceive color as light levels drop. Given a long enough exposure, your camera can pick out color details that are invisible to your eye, but getting accurate color in low light requires some work. Most of the time, you'll find that your low-light images shift to having a very warm orange or reddish cast. This is because the camera is not accurately white balancing for the available light. White balance is the process of calibrating your camera for the type of light that you're shooting in, so that colors appear accurate. In low light, it's very difficult for your camera's auto white balance mechanism to get an accurate white balance. If correct color is important to your shot, then you'll need to take some additional white balance action. You'll need to either manually white balance or you'll need to shoot RAW so that you can alter the white balance later. If you choose to shoot RAW, I recommend using a white…

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