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^ A good point well made.Originally Posted by Nick Cliff
Colour accuracy matters to me too.
But it is a different sort of colour accuracy. For my purposes, I like to see the same colour I saw in real life. If the light is blueish because of fog or overcast, the scene is blueish, and the photograph should be too. Sure, that scene will be a different colour at midday when the sun comes out, and a different colour again when it sets. But it will also look different in the winter as the grasses green up, and different on a windy day when they ripple in the breeze, different when a different bird perches on a different branch. And those differences, the endless variety of nature, is the entire point of photography. (My sort of photography anyway. I recognise that there are other sorts as well.)
Do I stick religiously to these self-imposed colour-accuracy rules? No. I break them as and when I please, just as I break any other photographic rule whenever it seems like a good idea at the time. But mostly I stick to them because they produce a more accurate, more meaningful, more true-to-life picture.
Would my true-to-life white balance suit a scientific paper, or a field guide? Obviously not. This sort of task requires a known, standard white balance just as it requires standard measurements of length and mass. But if we are considering, for example, a book showcasing the natural world, one that is the next best thing to being there, then the natural variation of natural light is important, and one captures this by picking a standard white balance and sticking to it.
(Is it not curious that one produces standard, same-every-time colour by varying the white balance, and one produces varying, true-to-life colour by not varying the white balance.)
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