RCP Photography School: Kelvin

Hello to all who’ve joined me on day 11 of this 26 day challenge to learn about the basics of photography.

I’m sure you’ve seen so many opportunities over lockdown to learn new skills from doing many online courses to taking part in virtual exercise classes, but I thought that you, as children, teenagers or people that need a therapy during lockdown for your mental health, would LOVE to do something that you can use your hands and mind to get creative.

If you’re doing this course, you probably already know a little bit about me but if you don’t, please check out who I am.

Today I’m going to talk about...

K for Kelvin

What is Kelvin and why is it important for me to know about?

When you take a photograph of a sky scape, the colour temperature is measured in Kelvin. The graph below, from Expert Photography, demonstrates this so well.

In simplified terms, the higher the colour temperature in kelvin, the bluer the image will be. You can either achieve this in-camera or changing the colour balance in editing software such as Adobe Photoshop.

Your digital camera will generally have settings that will assist with these temperatures, such as Auto (the camera automatically makes colour adjusts but they still may not be correct); Tungsten (used when light bulbs are your source of lighting, or the image is very blue); Shade (this setting is used when the environment is warmer than cloudy, adding warmth especially when photographing sunsets); Flash (when using artificial light such as flash guns, speed lites or other studio lights); Custom (this is when you would take a photograph of a grey card in the environment you are shooting in and that will customise the colour temperature).

Disclaimer: This graph above is not my own, it belongs to Expert Photography

But what is a grey card and how can it help?

This is just a small insight to kelvin and the meaning behind it, plus a small glimpse of what a grey card is and how it can help balance out the colour and exposure.