White Balance For Twilight Shots
May 15th, 2007
I was looking through the twilight photos over on the new Photography For Real Estate group photos on flickr and noticed the big difference that white balance setting makes in the look of a twilight image. The image above is one posted my M. James Northen. Notice the difference between the interior light color of this image and most of the other twilight images where the light is that characteristic orange color of incandescent lighting. Of course the difference is the image above was shot with the white balance set for incandescent light and the images with orange looking interior light were shot with white balance set for daylight.
I like the effect that using incandescent white balance has on the sky color in addition to rendering the interior lights nice an white. My first thought when I saw this image was, “he must have changed all the interior lights to daylight balanced bulbs”. Then I realized that would be crazy… all you have to do to get this look is set the white balance on you camera to incandescent!
Actually, M. James said he used an ExpoDisc to set the white balance. ExpoDisc allows you to use the custom white balance feature on most DSLRs to get the white balance right-on for each particular shot.
5 Responses to “White Balance For Twilight Shots”
jeff May 16th, 2007 at 3:08 pm #
beautiful shot.
James Northen May 16th, 2007 at 3:33 pm #
Thanks Jeff.
It was a privledge to be asked to shoot the house as the architect was Hugh Newell Jacobsen. Much of the home is glass walls and it sits on the water with these massive Oaks hanging over it.
Again Thanks,
M. James
Anonymous May 17th, 2007 at 8:01 am #
I made a few tries some months ago, wondering what is the night WB, in the dark. There is no good responses, because the WB is here to replicate the human perception, wich can’t see colors at night. So you have to pick the one you found the prettiest an don’t care with accuracy.
tolas May 18th, 2007 at 12:18 am #
Oh, this is really beautiful shot.
Dawn Shaffer May 19th, 2007 at 12:19 pm #
Stunning. I also use ExpoDisc. Worth the investment.
Dawn Shaffer, http://www.allaboutvirtualtours.com