Deceiving the camera to get the desired color balance

White balance set to 'Daylight'-Neutral color balance

White balance set to lower color temperature, resulting in cooler color balance.

White balance set to a higher color temperature, resulting in warmer colors.

Higher Kelvin temperatures give 'Cool' colors whereas lower color temperatures gives warm colors. Yet, it is suggested that we set a higher color temperature on a digital camera to get 'warmer' colors.

We set White Balance on a digital camera to compensate for the color of the existing light source. If the color of the light is orange (as with incandescent bulbs), the subject will take on a orange color cast.

Since we don't want the color cast, we set the White Balance to 'Incandescent', thereby telling the camera that in this orange colored light, we want our whites as white. Once that happens, all other colors will reproduce correctly.

During daytime (say 11.00am), by setting your digital camera to a higher Kelvin temperature you are deceiving the camera in to believing that the available light is 'cooler' (that is, 'bluer') when actually it is not. So the camera, assuming that the light is 'bluer' (that is, 'colder'), compensates in the opposite direction by making the image 'warmer'.

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