The Low Light Photography Field Guide

Color Temperature

Color temperature is arguably more important in low light photography than in any other, because the range of light sources you are likely to encounter varies widely on this scale.

First though, with apologies to all those people who know this already, a brief primer on the color temperature scale, and the reasons why it has a place in photography. It all starts with the sun, which is the reference standard in several ways for human vision. Its light, at least when it is high in the sky, is what we call white. As this light is created by burning—incandescent, in other words—there is an exact correlation between temperature and “whiteness.” The unit of temperature used is the Kelvin, which is basically similar to Celsius/Centigrade ...