"Color Temperature", "Color Balance", "White Balance". People new to photography, digital or traditional, often have a difficult time visualizing what these terms refer to initially. And even those who are familiar with these terms may not have a clear picture of how they all work together.

(Click on any image below for an enlarged view.)

To learn more about Color Temperature, Color Balance and White Balance indoors see the lesson on this site entitled “How To Set Your White Balance Indoors”.

COLOR TEMPERATURE
In basic terms, any light source (the sun, a light bulb) produces its own particular vibration, or frequency, to give it a certain hue, or Color Temperature. But since our eyes are so adaptable, the idea of Color Temperature can be somewhat confusing. Our eyes have the amazing ability to adjust the color of any particular light source, such that a white piece of paper illuminated by any single light source will automatically appear white. You can, however, notice obvious shifts in color when witnessing a scene lit with sources of varying Color Temperature, like yellow light emanating through the windows of a house contrasted against the blue light of dusk.

COLOR BALANCE
In a camera, Color Balance is achieved when an image is rendered close to how the eye perceives it. By setting the White Balance in your camera to match your light source, you can achieve "accurate" color, or Color Balance.

WHITE BALANCE
If you shoot with a film camera and want to achieve Color Balance in a daylight setting, you would use daylight film to match the Color Temperature of daylight. If you shoot with a film camera indoors with incandescent lighting, you would either choose Tungsten film to balance the Color Temperature. If you are shooting digitally, however, achieving Color Balance in any lighting situation is just a matter of setting the White Balance in the camera.

To illustrate how the White Balance function works, we decided to shoot a portrait in an outdoor setting. We wanted to shoot against a background that was neutral in color to illustrate clearly the shifts in color, so we went up to the roof of our studio and set up against the shadow side of a neutral gray wall.

Before shooting, we made some adjustments to the camera. We first set the Exposure mode to Manual, set the ISO to its lowest setting (100), and set the Image Quality to SHQ.

Although our result is rendered very high in contrast due to the position of the sun, the color of our model's skin looks accurate. To show how this setup would look "incorrectly" Color Balanced, we changed the White Balance preset from the Sun icon to the Light Bulb icon (3000 degrees Kelvin: a much warmer setting, designed to balance incandescent, or Tungsten lighting) and took another shot (figures 7-10).

Notice how blue the result is! With the White Balance set to 3000, the camera was set to record our subject illuminated with Tungsten light. But since the model was lit by the relatively cool light of the sun (review figure 1), the result looks as though a blue filter had been placed over the lens. However, shooting at an “incorrect” color setting can sometimes render an interesting look.

In order to soften the contrast of the shot, we attached a Photoflex 42" Translucent LiteDisc to a Photoflex LiteDisc Holder, secured it to a Photoflex LiteStand, and positioned it in between the model and the sun. We set the White Balance back to 5500 (figures 3, 4, & 5) and took another shot (figures 11 & 12).

Now our result is much more natural looking. The contrast has been cut way down and we are now able to make out the details of the model's eyes.

While the Translucent LiteDisc worked to diffuse the sunlight, there was also another light source affecting the right side of the model's face: the ambient light of the sky to the right of the model. Sometimes a sky fill works beautifully, and sometimes you will want to modify the fill light so that it is either lighter or darker. To lighten the fill, you might try positioning another LiteDisc, either White or Soft/Gold to the opposite side of the main source to bounce light into the shadows, or as is the case here, you may want to create a “negative” fill to increase contrast and a sense of dimension.

To create a negative fill here, we set up a Photoflex 42" Black LiteDisc and positioned it to the right of the model to both block the ambient light of the sky and to absorb the light passing through the Translucent LiteDisc. Once it was in place, we took another shot with the same settings (figures 13 & 14).

The result shows a nice lighting ratio, particularly for men: diffused light gradually falling off across the face to a subtle shadow along the right side accentuating the lines of the nose, cheekbone and jaw line.

It's good to keep in mind, however, that there is no definitive way to light a headshot. The architecture of each person's face is unique and as such may require a very different lighting approach. It will only help you to experiment and develop different lighting techniques and White Balance settings for different situations.