White Balance
(brought to you by QuickPro Camera Guides)
Understanding white balance in photography can greatly enhance your image’s appeal, especially when you are familiar with multiple light sources. Often times what you see in person to be white, your camera cannot. Thus, creates a color cast onto your images.
To correct this color cast, your camera needs to measure the white balance of a light source in terms of color temperature.
Color temperature measures the warmth and coolness of visible light in degrees Kelvin.
Higher Kelvin temperatures usually appear cool,
while lower temperatures appear warm, giving a yellowish cast
Your camera likely has an automatic white balance feature and allows select different lighting options. These automatic settings are useful for lighting conditions such as incandescent light, fluorescent light, daylight, cloudy, and shade. However, it is helpful to set a custom white balance yourself.
To set a custom white balance you can purchase a grey card from a local camera shop or simply use an object that is white under your current lighting situations. Access the custom white balance settings on your camera and photograph your white image. These settings can usually be saved an accessed in the future for correct white balance in similar lighting situations.
Assignments
• Photograph under conditions that would provide an unwanted color cast. A gymnasium often gives a yellow color cast. These images would have an incorrect white balance settings.
• Following this step-by-step process, set your camera’s custom white balance:
1. Purchase a white card from your local camera store, or use an object that is completely white.
2. Hold the white object into the same frame you will be taking the original image in.
3. Zoom in so only the white card is seen.
4. Set your cameras white balance to zero.
5. You should now have the ideal coloring for your image.
• Now, with your correct white balance set compare your new images to the images you first took and notice the difference.
