Part 4 Light. Tungsten and fluorescent lighting.

I am publishing part One of this exercise and will work on the Fluorescent lighting in part two when I have spoken to a neighbour and got permission to shoot images in his barn.

CFL lamps are all around me in the house,  but not as main lighting in my lounge.  In France it is very nearly impossible to buy an ordinary light bulb, they are so into energy efficiency and recycling that if one wanted to put a standard bulb into a light fitting the cost would make you think twice.

Am I the only student who has initially found this quite a difficult exercise, I took the light readings in various corners of the room, I chose the kitchen originally to compose my first set of images, as it is a very dark room anyway I was not happy with my trial results, so I went back to the very basics and started from scratch with the white balance on my camera set to manual and looking closely at the Kelvin colour temperature charts as seen below.

Visible colours are relative to the colour balance (white balance), with the common fixed settings being 3200K Indoor colour balance and 5500 Outdoor (daylight) colour balance.
Based on information from the book, Digital Lighting & Rendering.
Chart and colours (c)2003 Jeremy Birn.
Lighting and Rendering charts and colours

After sitting patiently and taking a series of images using the manual white balance setting and working through each of the above listed Kelvin ranges, I felt much happier with the knowledge I had gained. 

We were asked for this exercise to take 3 images when then light inside and outside is equal and balanced in light, using three WB. settings, Auto, Daylight and Tungsten.

This room is lit by a very large chandelier, just above where I positioned myself to take these images, in total 18 tungsten light bulbs lit the room from above.

I was able to set my camera to manual mode, ISO 100 throughout and F/8.0.

Fig 1.

Auto white balance

Fairly true to scene, and similar to that below, not quite so intense in colouration.

 

 

Fig 2.

Daylight white balance

Very warm glow to this image, I am surprised at how much warmth is seen, and results from using the Daylight WB. setting. The exterior view has a much less warmth to it.

 

 

Fig 3.

Tungsten white balance.

Blue colouration is seen here, the camera sensor has applied the blue tone to the scene outside the barn and a warmer yellow glow to the barn overall, due to the Tungsten WB.

I have much more knowledge of how lighting in any form and adjusting white balance can alter an image since working through those Kelvin charts.   It can be used creatively in Assignment 4.  I am sure I will benefit from this piece of learning and put it to good use in the future.