When shooting video, it is important to achieve a white balancing setting that gives you the desired color temperature at the point of acquisition. While you can apply filters or effects during editing, these can add additional processing time to your workflow. Taking the time to manually white balance your camera will reduce shifts in color temperature as the subjects move in the scene. The last thing you want is shifts in color. https://vimeo.com/37315644 White balance presets All digital cameras have some white balance presets for … [Read more...] about Understanding White Balance & Video
white balance
Manually Set Your White Balance For Accurate Color
Photography Basics - Learn How To Set Your WB All photographers need to know at least something about white balance. You can set it in the camera or you can fix it in post. If you want to fix it in post, I generally recommend that photographers shoot in RAW mode, which means that you can easily reset your white balance in post as if you had done it in the field. But that does mean that you spend (waste) time in post when you could have easily done the right thing in camera. I have come to a point in my life where I realize that I … [Read more...] about Manually Set Your White Balance For Accurate Color
Free ColorChecker Webinar with PF Author Kevin Ames
The X-Rite ColorChecker is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. It was originally created to help photographers get consistent results in color balance and exposure from one film emulsion lot to another. Today, the ColorChecker has become the photographic industry standard for obtaining accurate color and perfect exposures too. I'm presenting The Beginner Photographer's Secret Weapon: Why + How the Pros use ColorCheckers as a free webinar Wednesday, May 11, 2016 at !2:00pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time. Register for this free webinar … [Read more...] about Free ColorChecker Webinar with PF Author Kevin Ames
What’s Up With Lightroom’s White Balance Tools?
White Balance is all about the color of light, and the best reason to shoot RAW is the freedom to adjust the white balance with great power in post production. But what's up with Lightroom's White Balance Slider? Why is it backwards? Keep Cool, Like 2000 Kelvin If you've shot in RAW, you'll notice the top white balance slider has a number on the right, and that represents the color temperature in kelvins (if you're working with .jpg files, then you see a number from -100 to 100, but the affect is the same). A really orange light, like a sixty … [Read more...] about What’s Up With Lightroom’s White Balance Tools?
Want Better Photos? Turn OFF Auto White Balance (AWB)!
If you want to get serious about shooting calculated photoshoots, get yourself off Auto White Balancing! The camera usually does a great job at analyzing the lighting scenario and chooses a suitable color temperature when it is set to AWB. The problem is that setting it to auto lets the camera adjust the white balance ever so slightly for every single image, reducing consistency if you're sending out a batch of pictures from one specific location. Varying factors, such as color of clothing or reflected sunlight, are the prime suspects for the … [Read more...] about Want Better Photos? Turn OFF Auto White Balance (AWB)!
Manually White-Balancing a Camera
If you're shooting raw, you may have gotten a bit lazy with your white balance settings since they are so easy to fix in post. But if you're shooting video or JPEG, there is a benefit to getting it "right in camera." Here's a video I recorded for the DPBestflow project which may help you. https://vimeo.com/37315644 ______ … [Read more...] about Manually White-Balancing a Camera
Setting a Custom White Balance
While White Balance presets and Auto White Balance can be quite useful, many choose to manually set the white balance on their cameras. This is a useful approach if you need to compensate for when multiple lighting sources are mixed together in the same scene. It is also a way to warm or cool a shot for stylistic purposes. If you want to work numerically, you can use these numbers in degrees Kelvin as a guide. 1,700K Match flame 1,850K Candle flame 2,7003,300K Incandescent lightbulb 3,400K Studio lamps 4,100K Moonlight 5,000K Horizon … [Read more...] about Setting a Custom White Balance
Choosing the Right White Balance Preset
The White Balance setting on your camera is one of the most important choices to make. This control can be used to neutralize any color cast in an image and to set the overall color (or tone) for the scene. White is most often used as a reference point because it is the perfect blend of all the color channels. While many are perfectly content to shoot in an Auto White Balance setting... this can lead to extra work in post. Changes in lighting conditions (such as clouds passing overhead) can create variations in skin tones or subjects that … [Read more...] about Choosing the Right White Balance Preset
Going for Red! Diffusion + White Balance = Big Color
Have you ever attended a truly great seminar? Where the impact on your life was enough to actually motivate you to change? A couple of weeks ago I attended Skip Cohen University's THRIVE in Las Vegas, and it was just that sort of event. The best thing about SCU is the relationships you get to build with other photographers as well as the instructors. I finally met Tom Shue and he invited me along for a wonderful afternoon making pictures with him and Clay Blackmore. Clay is an instructor at SCU, and it was really a pleasure to get out and see … [Read more...] about Going for Red! Diffusion + White Balance = Big Color
Photographic White Balance
Guest Post & Photo by Stephan Bollinger Circle Stephan on Google+ I often get an empty stare when I talk to new photographers about white balance, so I thought, this short blog post might be helpful. Every lighting situation produces different colours, and even the sun light changes in colour temperature throughout the day, from warmer tones in the morning and evening, to a cooler / bluer tone middays. In automatic mode, nearly all cameras are looking for a neutral tone, 18% grey to be exact, and the rendition of all other colours is … [Read more...] about Photographic White Balance
Free Video Tutorial – How To Set Your Camera’s White Balance In Post
Guest Post by Watch the free video tutorial demonstrating - How To Set Your Camera's White Balance In Post... DISCLAIMER: This post isn't intended to be definitive - we're not claiming this is the ONLY way or even the BEST way to accomplish this task in Photoshop or any other post-prodcessing program. We're merely offering it as A way you might accomplish this task. These tips are free, offered only because they might be helpful to someone. ____________________ … [Read more...] about Free Video Tutorial – How To Set Your Camera’s White Balance In Post
The Effects of White Balance on RAW Photo Files
Kent asked me a question. "What effect does a camera's white balance setting have on a raw file? Why should I bother with a white balance setting in camera when shooting raw?" When you shoot RAW you can in effect change the white balance you shot with in post. So at first blush it might seem that there's no reason to mess with white balance if you shoot RAW. But there is at least one reason to reconsider that position. If you are shooting in a high production environment and you are making lots of exposures, then you have to think about the … [Read more...] about The Effects of White Balance on RAW Photo Files
White Balance in Infrared Photography
Post & Photo by The above unprocessed photograph is how one of my files looked directly from the infrared-converted SLR that captured it. To see what the final, processed image looks like, check below: As they used to sing on the old Perry Como TV show, letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters Nowadays I get e-mail and some of them are from photographers just beginning to dip their toes into the water of infrared photography. Lately one of those questions that keeps popping is How do I set a custom white balance for … [Read more...] about White Balance in Infrared Photography
Getting Perfect White Balance with Food Photography
One of the most common challenges I have seen many new food photographers struggle with is getting proper white balance (colors) and also exposure (tones/brightness/contrast) in their food images. When we photograph people we usually have a skin tone to gauge what our white balance is, and since our minds naturally know what looks right its not too difficult to find the right balance. With food its different since the colors and tones can be whatever we make them to be, and sometimes its hard to get the image back to those bright, vivid colors … [Read more...] about Getting Perfect White Balance with Food Photography
