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Kelvin Temperature of Illumination
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Forget about Kelvin temperatures unless you're an engineer. Kelvin degrees work backwards from how we expect them to work in photography and common sense. Kelvin degrees are the same as Celsius, except for being 273 degrees apart.
If Kelvin temperature is uniformly the same throughout the scene, life is simple! But you can expect a significant variation in Kelvin temperature within many scenes.
The Kelvin temperature scale sets its zero point at absolute zero (-273.15 on the Celsius scale, and -459.67 on the Fahrenheit scale).
The idea of a true minimum temperature has been confirmed by many experiments.
For the sake of those unfamiliar with the Kelvin temperature color, allow me a brief digression. Baron Kelvin was the title of a guy whose real name was William Thomson who lived in nineteenth century Britain.
The high Kelvin temperature associated with ambient light at these times of day causes the images to take on a deep bluish cast.
Setting higher Kelvin temperature will give warmer tones to high temperature lighting like shade, and setting lower Kelvin temperatures will make lighting that is too yellow or warm look brighter, like pictures under an incandescent light bulb.
Abbreviation for Kelvin temperature, the measurement of the redness or blueness of white light. This is written without the degree sign.
Ironically, warmer objects (those registering higher Kelvin temperatures) emit blue, a color that is traditionally considered to be a cooler color on the color wheel.
Twilight appears almost blue-purple on daylight film due to its extremely high Kelvin temperature. When cityscapes are photographed at twilight, the contrast between the lights of buildings and the cobalt blue sky is very dramatic.
These settings (called Kelvin temperature ratings) are represented by symbols for sun, indoor light, clouds and shade on most digital displays and can be manually selected.
"A man's got to know his limitations" and while I believe this, I don't think Dirty Harry was referring to white balance in the D1 Family when he said it. To start understanding what we have to work with, here's the Kelvin Temperature range we have ...
For example, a cool blue sky measures 10,000 K, and strobe lights are rated at 6,000 K (The degree symbol is not used when discussing Kelvin temperatures). Below please find a chart of common light sources and their approximate Kelvin values.
Confusingly, higher Kelvin temperatures (3600-5500 K) are considered cool and lower color temperatures (2700-3000 K) are considered warm. Cool light produces higher contrast and is considered better for visual tasks.
Canon DSLR that isn't doing a great job at white balance under artificial lighting. If you want white whites and you're indoors or in any mixed light situation, you will almost definitely need to use the custom white balance or Kelvin temperature ...
The definition of colour temperature is highly technical - it refers to the colour of light produced by a theoretical "black body" object that's heated to a certain temperature, measured in Kelvin temperature units.
The higher color temperature of the light produces a rich blue. Even though the faint ambient light of evening does not look blue to our eyes, an exposure of ten seconds or longer reveals the high Kelvin temperature.
or manual white balance is available in many cameras and is accomplished by pointing the camera at a white surface and clicking the shutter. Higher-end cameras have a variety of white-balance options, including the ability to set Kelvin temperatures ...
 See also: Kelvin, Temperature, Camera, Color, Image
  
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