Blogalicious: a philippine photo odyssey

According to Wikipedia.. Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in photography, videography, publishing and other fields. The color temperature of a light source is determined by comparing its chromaticity with a theoretical, heated black-body radiator. The temperature (usually measured in kelvin (K)) at which the heated black-body radiator matches the color of the light source is that source’s color temperature;

“The Kelvin Scale (K) can be used to define a relationship between the heat property of the light and the color. The lower the Kelvin temperature, the warmer (red/long wavelength) the light, while the higher the number, the cooler (blue/short wavelength) the light.” - Camera 101 -White Balancing

Here is a list of Light Sources and their Color Temperature.

1700 K Match flame

1850 K Candle flame

2800–3300 K Incandescent light bulb (75w, 100w, 200w)

3200 K 500 watt tungsten lamp

3350 K Studio “CP” light

3400 K Studio lamps, photofloods, 500 watt photolamp

4100 K Moonlight, xenon arc lamp

5000- 5400 K Horizon daylight

5500 K Photographic Daylight

5500–6000 K Typical daylight, electronic flash

6500 K Daylight, overcast

9300 K CRT screen

Why is this scale useful? It will help you keep your whites whiter and that is important in any shoot.. if you see the color cast on the photo, you can easily compensate by adjusting the Kelvin scale to increase or decrease the color temperature depending on your requirement.

Is AUTO White Balance fool proof? I am afraid not.. in certain mixed lighting conditions, the mix of light may be too bluish or orangish.. depending on which is the more dominant light source. You will have to adjust the kelvin scale on your camera to get a good balance between light sources. a shorcut would be to do a custom white balance against a white surface or a gray card or even use a EXPODISC (sample shots here).

Are their other uses of Color Temperature? Yes.. you can do creative photography by using color balance to change the mood of the photo to make it warmer.. or cooler depending on what you want to convey to your viewers. You can actually cool down a sunset by changing the white balance.. try it..from warm sunny skies you will get a cold blue sky..

Here are 3 photos using Different White Balance Settings.

using the EXPODSIC

Using Auto white balance

Using Incandescent White Balance.

For record purposes i submitted the first photo to get the proper colors.. but the last one has more mood into it and made it look more warm and cozy… which one do you prefer?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Digital Sensor Sizes and How they affect how you see the image.

here is a short lesson in sensor sizes.

The reason I write about this is to give basic sample of how sensor sizes affect the final image. as you can see in the first image, sensor sizes arent created equal and so far the 35mm film sensor size is limited to a few brands.
To date only Canon’s 1Ds/1DsMkII/5D and the Kodak DCS 14N have reached the holy grail of a full framed sensor. The rest of the Canon digital cameras use a 1.6X crop while our beloved nikons use a 1.5x crop factor and the rest use either the 4/3 system or smaller.
The first 2 sizes 1/3″ -2/3″ are generally used by cellphone digital cameras.. the original photo is so small that when enlarged you see all the imperfections of the small lens and camera and noise comes out more because even noise is “enlarged”

noise.. thats another topic.. but generally people should stick with the rule that the higher your ISO settings is the more noise you will get and this also goes with the rule the smaller your sensor is the more noise it will produce especially at photos that are enlarged bigger than their rated capacity.

Dont expect to be able to produce large quality prints (APS sensor size is the limiting factor) from compact cameras at high ISO modes.

If you intend to buy a compact for use in low light (indoor or night events) look for a fast lens (2.8 or better) that would definitely help better than setting your ISO to 1600 or 3200

One of the advantages on the other hand of the “crop factor” is that the center of the lens is always considered the sharpest and best part of the lens, so corner distortions are minimized but quality but a problem arises here…a decent wide angle lens will cost you more a lot more.. take a look at the photo of the superimposed image above.. you will only see the sunset and the tree on a full framed image..the only solution is to get a wide angle or the more practical solution would to be to step back.. a few feet more…
I hope this helps..

Popularity: 1% [?]