White Balance: More Fun Than Balancing Your Books

White Balance: More Fun

Than Balancing Your Books

 "I couldn't find a non-racist quote about the color white online." - Jesse Krause 
    

     In this article, I'll be discussing a camera adjustment that can have a huge impact on the quality of your images. Some amateur photographers may believe that it's specialized knowledge, it's tweaky, it's excessive, or not something they need to worry about. And maybe for them, that's true. But for me and my crew (that's you), this stuff is crucial. Ladies and gentlemen, I present....

White Balance!!!!

Pretty awesome drawing, right? I did it myself...

     That's right, white balance. I'm sure you've heard of it, or read an article online about it (like this one), or even played around with it on your camera. But do you know how it works? If you do, stop reading and go take some pictures. If you don't, keep reading, then go take some pictures.

     White balance is called "white balance" because your essentially balancing all of the colors in the photograph until the areas that are supposed to represent white, do so accurately. It can also be called color balance or grey balance. The main goal is find a mixture of reds, greens, and blues to get the grey or white parts of the image looking neutral. This process was originally used by technicians to correct video recordings, and film photographers just used gels & special film types to correct for unusual lighting color during exposure. Now, with the technologies available in digital cameras, color balance can be easily achieved after the image has been recorded.

     You probably already know by now that the color white is actually made up of all of the visible colors. So it stands to reason that if your adjusting a digital image to correct a "white balance", that all of the colors that aren't pure white (via over exposure) will be effected. For example, if your photo has a red cast over the whole image (and assuming you shot RAW), you could take the digital file into a photo-editing program, find your color correction tools, and lower the reds of the entire image. This would eventually fix the red cast in the parts of the image that were supposed to be white or grey or blue or whatever... But, all the parts of the image that were extremely red may now have a more green hue to them. Or, they could just be a less saturated red, or if an object in the photo was purple, it may now be blue.

    Theoretically, this should be fine because to get that red cast, you either made the photograph with the wrong white balance setting for the existing environment, or you made the photograph in an environment that had a LOT of red ambient light. So even though your corrections are effecting all of the colors in the image, this is probably a good thing as you wouldn't want to remove reds from only the blues or only the greens because you'd get some funny looking results then. Though for creative purposes, artists have certainly been know to make changes like that. But what about scenarios where you have two or more different types of lighting and each one is drastically effecting the image? In the real world, our eyes & brain are capable of adjusting, determining, and translating in real time what the scene "should" look like. But a camera, smart as it is, isn't as smart as our brains. So the images come out looking very strange because it hasn't been modified or translated. It's an exact representation of the reflected and ambient light in that scene. And since we're familiar with seeing what our brains are capable of, a non-translated version will look "off".
     
     One other point to touch on is that photos whose white balance is corrected are usually done so in anticipation of a common type of viewing area. For example, how many people do you know that use only blue colored light bulbs in their house? Or how many office buildings have red carpet, red walls & ceilings, and red tinted windows? Not many right? So if we assume that a great majority of viewing environments have white walls & ceilings, regular windows if any, and tungsten or halogen bulbs for lighting, then we should be pretty safe when adjust the white balance of the photos in a "normal" fashion. Our whites will be white and our greys grey. If, however, we know that the images will be viewed in an environment with an ambient color cast of some kind, then we can pre-adjust the images using our white balance corrections so that they will look "normal" when viewed in that environment. For example, some art galleries or shows may choose to lower the brightness of the lights, which with tungsten bulbs, will create a much warmer and orange looking color in the room. If you want your photos to look their best in this environment, you'd be wise to test some different white balance settings on your photos in a similar environment prior to the show. You may find that adding a slight blue color cast could really help!
 
    OK, let's talk about some settings on your camera shall we? I'll be referring to Canon cameras, because that's what I shoot, but for the most part, all DSLRs will have the same white balance settings (though they may be listed under different names). Below are the white balance settings that I have on my cameras:

•     Auto
•     Daylight
•     Shade
•     Cloudy
•     Flash
•     Tungsten
•     Fluorescent
•     Custom
•     Kelvin  

     Thankfully, when you need to select a particular white balance setting, the name pretty much says it all. I imagine it would pretty frustrating had the camera manufactures chose "Setting 1, setting 2, setting 3" etc... The names tell you which setting to use in a particular scenario, and now we need to discuss why you should choose them. 

Auto
     Pretty self explanatory, really. This is usually the setting I choose under normal scenarios because of how accurate it is most of the time... Yes, I said most of the time. Its job is to auto-correct; so for example, if you want your image to look warm and inviting, you'll have to fix it in post or choose the daylight setting. Otherwise, this is a great "everyday shooting" selection. 

Daylight, Shade, Cloudy & Flash
     These settings are used to compensate for the higher color temperatures of different types of outdoor light and artificial strobe light. The higher color temperature outside comes mostly from reflected light in the blue sky and the strobes have a higher color temperature because they're designed to mimic the color temperature of outdoor light. What the camera does with these white balance settings is shift the colors of the photo: away from blue and toward yellow, away from cyan and toward red, etc. 

Tungsten
     The "Tungsten" setting will be very useful indoors IF there are incandescent bulbs present. It essentially does the opposite of the Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, and Flash white balance settings. In a "warm" toned environment, it "cools" the image by shifting colors toward blue.

Fluorescent
     This setting is great if your working around fluorescent bulbs. Without any kind of white balance adjustment, your images will have a slight green tint to them. I can deal with extra reds or blues, but green? No thanks... 

Custom
     This is a handy tool to use if your not sure of what the camera is seeing. Maybe your at a fancy party in Hollywood and you've forgotten everything you've learned about white balance and you don't trust "Auto" mode to protect you... 

1. Just set the white balance to "Custom"
2. Find something that's white (an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper works great)
3. Fill the frame entirely with that object
4. Take a picture
5. Select that photo as the reference 

     That reference photo will continue to be used until you tell the camera otherwise. So if your party moves to another house or local bar, be sure to make a new reference photo or use another white balance setting!

Kelvin
This setting is usually only found on the pro grade cameras and is for those photographers that really know their sh*t. The selections within this setting are all temperature selections (3000K, 5000K, 8000K, etc.). So, for example, lets say that your out photographing Rhinos in the desert plains of Africa, and one of the Rhinos stops underneath a tree to rest. You want the best photo you can make, so you have to decide which white balance setting to use. The grass in the field is yellow, the sky is deep blue, the Rhino is grey, and he's sitting under a green tree in heavy shade! I honestly don't know what the correct setting would be, but I would probably choose something like 6500K. 

     Now as you read more articles or books about white balance (and I know your excited to do that), you'll find that some say white balance should be adjusted to taste and doesn't really have to be accurate. Well, that's very nice, but... if you want to show your photographs so they accurately represent what was actually in the scene, you should try to get the white balance correct in the camera. It will mean less post processing, and what photographer doesn't want that??? I would highly recommend that you get in the habit of setting your white balance appropriately per location. Another option is to leave the camera's white balance setting on auto, and take a photograph at each location of an item that you know is supposed to be white, like a sheet of paper. Then during post, correct the white balance on batches of photos based on the white objects you photographed. If you read the article about lens caps (link) you'll see that I recommend putting a sticker inside of the lens cap as a quick way to obtain a neutral tone for color balancing in post. If you use Photoshop, remember to use a neutral gray sticker as opposed to white sticker because the white balance tool looks for neutral tones, not white.

     Well, that's about all I can think of to say about white balance. I do hope hat you've learned something, and I very much appreciate your reading these articles. If there's anything that I've posted that's in error, or if you have any questions about the topics in this blog, don't hesitate to leave it in a comment below!