CAPTURE LOW-KELVIN COLOURS

Work with reds, oranges and yellows to capture better shots of sunsets, landscapes and interiors

One of the biggest challenges of capturing any strong colour is the fallibility of automatic white balance systems. Even the most advanced pro cameras, as incredible as they are, don't react well to very warm or extremely cool scenes. For locations featuring a lot of red or many shades of red, this can result in an unexpectedly flat rendering of the most vibrant colours. If shooting a sunrise, instead of images glowing with golden tones, the camera will often produce a shot with too much blue to look natural. This is because the colour assessment algorithms used by the camera's onboard computers are attempting to output a neutral result, one that's closer to a standard midtone grey.

Of course, this can be fixed in postprocessing, but there's a good reason to capture accurate warm colour in-camera, even if you're shooting raw files. When taking a dull image into software, one that you knew was much more eye-catching in reality, there is a danger of taking things too far and over-processing. So, let's take a look at how you can shoot scenes featuring lots of colours at the low end of the Kelvin scale, for better results straight to your memory card.

THE COLOUR WHEEL

Use the Colour Wheel to determine which colours look best when used together, and also to ensure that you're shooting the full range of hues available.

UNDERSTAND SINGLECHANNEL CLIPPING