Shooting in Kelvin was a game changer for me as a photographer. No more worrying about yellow tones from lights anymore! Kelvin is a scale to measure the color of light. Each image you take has a color temperature attached to it. A lot of people default to using the white balance settings that are preprogramed into the camera. You might have changed your camera’s settings to auto white balance or shade or cloudy to get the right temperature you want.
Or maybe you have never changed the color temperature on your camera before (and you have no idea, what I am talking about!).
Your camera normally automatically decides the color temperature of an image as you take it….though it might not be what you wanted. You can change your settings to shoot in Kelvin and manually change the color temperature of your image to warmer or cooler based off your setting (graphic from fstoppers). I love shooting in Kelvin and deciding the temperature of my images and it allows me to have control if the lighting in a room is not ideal. And it saves me so much time in the editing process! I don’t have to worry if my images are too blue or too orange!
Depending on the camera you use, look under your white balance or color option and change it to Kelvin!
Here are a few tips for first using the Kelvin setting:
-shoot in Raw format. It is SO much easier to correct/edit an image in the RAW format. If your color settings are not exact, you are more than likely going to be able to fix it in the RAW format.
-learn the scale (graphic above). It is easier and faster to adjust your camera if you know the settings.
-practice and be patient! There is a little bit of a learning curve to adjusting your color.
*I photograph events for our church and the gym is sooo yellow. The lights are yellow and bounces off the yellow floor casting a yellow tone to everything. I know that I will be shooting in Kelvin to color correct the pictures before they even get into Lightroom. (Could you imagine how yellow this picture would be on the auto white balance setting?!)
