Judging colour temperature 2

So looking at the photos in the previous exercise, the picture in the shade looks better with the colour balance converted to shade.  This brings more colour to my husband's face and makes him look less ill... however, the picture still looks flat and the only thing to do about that is not take it in the shade.

The picture taken of him in sunlight is very harsh.  Again the way to remedy this is not to take it in sunlight, however, adjusting the white balance to cloudy does improve the picture - it makes it look warmer, but can't change the fact that he can't look directly at the sunlight.

Admittedly the picture shot late in the evening is a bit orange, reflecting the warm glow of the sun.  On a building or landscape this is very pleasing, but we don't want people to look like they've had a cuprinol bath.  Obviously changing from sunlight to cloudy and shade made the situation worse, but I found that changing the white balance to High Colour Fluorescent toned down the orange a bit.

 The next exercise involved shooting the same scene with the white balance set to three different settings: sunlight, shade and Auto. So on the alotted sunny day, I took advantage of my cat lying in the sun in my backgarden.  I also selected the cloudy white balance setting.

Auto

Sunlight

Shade

Cloudy

In bright sunlight, the auto setting is very cool, as is the sunlight setting (which is probably what it defaulted to).  The light is very blue - and it takes warmth away from the scene.  In contrast, the shade settings warms the scene up dramatically - but it makes the green on the wood very green - more green than is realistic.  The cloudy setting, which is my preferred option for sunlight, adds warmth but not too much green.

This is consistent with photos I took in Brighton last year on a bright summer's day (think hottest day of the year) - in fact the sun was very harsh; the shot of the ferris wheel looks better with the cloudy setting and the shot of the old pier taken from the newer pier looks better in the shade setting.  Although the sunlight setting images are more accurate of the light available, the cloudy/shade settings add more warmth and are more representative of the memory of the day.

Cloudy

Sunlight

Sunlight

Shade

I think I would only use the sunlight setting if I deliberately wanted to make a picture look cool - e.g. a winter sun snow scene.  Although blue is the hottest colour in this context, we associate it with coolness.  The slightly greener light of cloudy white balance is much more pleasing (in my opinion).