Exercise - Tungsten & Fluorescent Lighting

Tungsten Light

  

After looking out of the window for a minute, with daylight fading, the light in the room appeared yellow / orange.  Looking outside again, daylight appeared blue. 

Setting the ISO to 100 and the aperture to its fullest (3.5) I found the shutter speed could be reduced to 1/6.  Increasing the shutter speed further made the exposure quite dark.

I then increased the ISO to 200, adjusting the aperture and shutter speed slightly, to take the following three images with varying white balance settings, as indicated.



 

2013.03.29.TungstenLight (1)
f/4.5 1/5 ISO-200
White balance: Auto



With the white balance set to auto, the light inside the room appears a little yellow, and there is a blue tinge to the outside view through the window.


2013.03.29.TungstenLight (2)
f/4.5 1/5 ISO-200
White balance: Daylight



 Now changing the white balance to daylight, the room appears very yellow / orange, while outside is still a bit blue it is less obvious than in the previous image.


2013.03.29.TungstenLight (3)
f/4.5 1/5 ISO-200
White Balance: Tungsten

The last image, with white balance set to tungsten, shows a more neutral and even light in the room.  Outside appears quite blue again, in fact more so than in the first image.

  

Fluorescent Light

 



2013.03.29.Kitchen-FluorescentLight (1)
f/11  1/8  ISO-1600
White balance: Auto



2013.03.29.Kitchen-FluorescentLight (2)
f/11  1/8  ISO-1600
White balance: Fluorescent

 In the first image under fluorescent light there is a slight green tinge.  This is most noticeable in areas of neutral colour, such as the chopping board behind the kettle.  There is some improvement with the white balance set to fluorescent for the second image, although not entirely corrected.



2013.04.02.Office(fluorescent) (1)
f/14  1/30  ISO-800
White balance: Auto

2013.04.02.Office(fluorescent) (2)
f/14  1/30  ISO-800
White balance: Fluorescent

 I was told that the lights in the office where I work are supposed to replicate natural light, so thought it would be interesting to perform the exercise there.  Also, the neutral tones should show the difference in the colour of the light.  A messy office isn't the most appealing of subjects, so I chose to incude the lights themselves in the composition.

In the first image, with white balance set to auto, there is a very clear green tinge.  This is largely corrected in the second image with the white balance changed to fluorescent, although I would not say that all colours are totally true to reality.  One other thing I noticed while scanning the room throught the view finder was how uneven the lighting is in this room, despite a pretty even spread of very bright lights.  This was not so noticeable to the naked eye.