the best way to white balance

G

Garinion

Active member
Hello

I'm going to rent HVX200 the next month to shoot my film..but I have start from now to know how to use the camera to be ready when it comes ..

Also I will have a laptop with Adobe OnLocation for monitoring on set .. and I'm trying to find the best way to white balance...the manual gives two ways..one with the AWB and other with Auto Tracking White..and also recommend and Black Balance(how will it be done?)

I'm new and little confused with that stuff ... (also will I need vetroscope and wavemonitor from onLocation or all the job will be by the camera)

Thanks ... and sorry for the dumb questions ...
 
Barry Green's book is the high road to all your answers. Money well spent especially since you have the prep time.
AWB is the way I would recommend and how I use the camera. Auto tracking may be useful in some situations but you are turning the decision making over to the camera rather than making those choices yourself. I would first take a look at the presets for either 3200 or 5600 to see if that WB is satisfying. If not take a manual WB . Remember where you saved it, either A/B so you can use that WB again if you have to go back and do a pickup shot that you missed. Everything matches that way.
Cheers
 
AWB lets the camera decide the white balance setting, and there are few scenarios where I would use that.

What I would do instead is get a proper whitebalance target (there are many, but sheets of paper and T-shirts don't qualify), and perform a manual whitebalance off that. If you continue to hold down the button after the whitebalance has been completed, the camera will do the blackbalance.
 
I found that the best surface to manual WB is a sheet of White ABS plastic board.

(I sanded mine in order to avoid reflections)

Paper fades to yellow color.

It is faster under brilliant sun o heavy Ultraviolet light.
 
I guess I'd want to know what the specific shot is and what the specific lighting situation is to best determine WB options.
I personally really hate AWB, but realize it is necessary in some situations.
If you give us a better idea of what you're shooting and what the lighting conditions are, we can give you better advice.
 
Today I was trying the camera and had a strange results with white balance.

The two light in the room are yellow and the light is yellowish.
Without touching buttons, the scene was real in the LCD.
But when I tried to set the white balance pushing the button below the lens (using the white wall as target), all the ambient light in the scene became white in the LCD, instead of the real yellow that I could see with my eyes.

Why ?
 
ShootDC said:
Barry Green's book is the high road to all your answers. Money well spent especially since you have the prep time.
AWB is the way I would recommend and how I use the camera. Auto tracking may be useful in some situations but you are turning the decision making over to the camera rather than making those choices yourself. I would first take a look at the presets for either 3200 or 5600 to see if that WB is satisfying. If not take a manual WB . Remember where you saved it, either A/B so you can use that WB again if you have to go back and do a pickup shot that you missed. Everything matches that way.
Cheers
Click to expand...

I will second this advice except that I would get the DVD's first. The $'s spent on this will save you untold hours of frustration.

FWIW: I've found auto white balance works pretty good with sunny outdoor light but can be hit-n-miss for artificial lighting.

Regards
JohnG
 
gigionmac said:
Today I was trying the camera and had a strange results with white balance.

The two light in the room are yellow and the light is yellowish.
Without touching buttons, the scene was real in the LCD.
But when I tried to set the white balance pushing the button below the lens (using the white wall as target), all the ambient light in the scene became white in the LCD, instead of the real yellow that I could see with my eyes.

Why ?
Click to expand...
Because you told the camera that what it was looking at was white (or at least neutral in color, with equal R/G/B components). That is the purpose of whitebalancing.
 
I think you are very new to this, so let me tell you this: Do not ever use the auto-white-tracking. The only scenario you might consider using it is when you have a continuous shot that starts with tungsten lighting and ends with daylight (or the other way round, of course). However, unless you are shooting a real-life documentary where you might get away with a change in white balance mid-shot, don't even consider it in this situation. Rather re-light the tungsten to daylight, or find a middle-ground with the white balance.
So, do you follow me? If you can't follow me 100% then I just say it again: do not use the auto-tracking white!
I have to admit that with handheld camcorders I have quite often used auto focus and/or auto-iris (because it's really hard with most handhelds to do both manually on a real-time eng shoot). However I can say for sure that I never ever in my life used ATW.

So, how do you use the Auto-White (AWB, which is a misleading title, it's actually the "manual" white, it's only called "auto" because with studio cameras the manual white balance is done really manual, color channel by color channel, using a vectorscope). Bring something white in front of your lens (a white piece of paper will do, I never used something more expensive than that - in my experience printer paper is a little blueish which leads to a little warmer results, which I think is great, but if you are that picky about little nuances, you might just as well correct it in post) and hit the AWB button. The camera defines the current picture as "white" and saves it in the current place ("A" or "B"). By the way your frame doesn't have to be totally white to perform a white balance, you can even white balance during a normal shot without anything specifically white in the frame. Mostly the camera gets it pretty much right (don't ask me how...), but if you bring something completely white into the frame you have better control of what you consider white.

So, when do you need an auto white? I always try to do a whole shoot with only one white balance (ideally). If there's something a little too red or too blue in certain shots then I can always fix that in post, but apart from that, it looks consistent. If you white balance all the time (like once in evening sunlight, once in shade) then all your shots will be "neutral", but you won't be able to inter-cut the sunlight and shade shots because they will look completely different. In that case find a common ground-white balance in advance (I like to fold white paper once, put it right in front of the lens, hold it into the sunlight and white balance, this way you usually get something in between shade and sun)

Black balance is something that is not totally necessary (if you forget it, don't mind, it won't be that bad). It is however easy to just do with the white balance. Just hold the white balance button a little longer and the cam automatically goes into black balance. It closes the iris on black balance, so you don't have to worry about anything at all.

I have to say that I often use the white balance presets. A film camera 1st AC and very good eng cameraman once told me "using WB presets is like shooting film: you can chose between daylight and tungsten. Whatever light doesn't fit makes it more colorful - but that's one of the good things about film"
However I don't like the 5.6K (=daylight) preset on the HVX200 too much, it's pretty cold. However the manual white balance often turns out pretty warm in daylight, the HVX is not too easy with white balancing....
In tungsten-lit situations I never hesitate to use the 3.2K preset though. Unless the tungsten light is extremely dimmed-down the preset gives the most natural look. Like you said with your yellow lights - if they are tungsten lights, just use the preset and the picture will represent the yellow color almost exactly as you see it. That's what the two presets are for: show the most natural colors in case of either tungsten or daylight situations. Of course the presets can only be averaged, but usually they are pretty good. If you want to color-grade in post anyways, the presets are never that wrong, I think.

By the way you change from 3.2K to 5.6K preset if you hold the ATW button for 2 seconds or so when the ATW switch is set to "PRST"

Wow, my post got somewhat long for a basic explanation, but I think you really have to understand this to get it right. If you get the whole white balance thing then you will also get the whole lighting thing, and you'll be a good cameraman :)
 
Last edited:
FBAS said:
IBy the way you change from 3.2K to 5.6K preset if you hold the ATW button for 2 seconds or so when the ATW switch is set to "PRST"
Click to expand...
You don't need to hold it down -- with the switch set to PRST, all you need to do is tap the AWB button briefly.
 
Hello,

(I also favor Barry's book!).
Is the white balance saved if I turn the camera off?
Assuming that I have done a manual white balance adjustment with my lighting setup, and I am using the same lighting setup the next time I turn the camera on.

I am using an HVX200.

Thank you Forum,

eholz1
 
Yeah man I stick to the presets, that way you light it like you would like film. There's only two choices. I like the hpx170 daylight preset, it's a but cold but it works. You can dial it in in post. Sometimes i'll manually white balance if I really need to render a certain temperature as perfectly nuetral, like during an interview if I'm using dimmers and my light is more like 2900k or something. But I wouldn't normally reccomend that because you gain up the blue channel so much that there is noise. Stay between 3.2k and 5.6k and you should be fine. The hvx is not a cmos camera, and doesn't use a bayer filter, so you should be fine balancing for tungsten, no extra noise to worry about.

And stay away from auto white balance and auto focus. Ick.
 
and remember the two presets will render color temperatured lights differently. The temperature of a light is constant but the way the light appears in the image is relative to your white balance preset.

when using 3200k balance:
Anything below 3200k is warm, anything above 3200k is cool

when using 5600k balance:
Anything below 5600k is warm, anything above 5600k is cool

And like I said, don't balance for extremely ends of the spectrum, like 1900k or 8000k, because the camera will have to add gain to either blue or red to compensate

Hope I've been of help!!
 
eholz1 said:
Hello,

Is the white balance saved if I turn the camera off?

eholz1
Click to expand...

in my experience, it appears to. the manual is not specific, but it does imply that black balance is saved (because it recommends doing a BB only on rare occasions), so I might assume that WB is saved also.
 
Is custom white balance saved?

Is custom white balance saved?

Hello All,

Thanks for the info. Actually, (as an afterthought) we should try for perfection, which really means that we should reset the white balance at the next scene/shoot.

Thanks,

eholz1
 
Since this is continuing, I'll add my 2 cents.
Consider white balancing your camera as "Painting" the "canvas" white to keep all other colors as pure as possible.
If you are shooting outside, white balance will paint the base canvas white as opposed to blue.
If you are shooting with tungsten, your base canvas will be orange and you are simply painting it white.

Now, so often we are forced to shoot in mixed light situations. Once you deal with this enough you'll be able to see the blue, orange and maybe green spill on your white card and can "paint" the scene to match your desired look.

Simply average the color spill on the white card and balance off that. You will then get subtle natural colors which would be expected. i.e. the window light will cast slight blue and a lamp light will cast slight orange. This is what viewers expect and gives a natural feel to the scene.

Obviously, if your outside source is too strong, you would want to put a 1/4, 1/2 or full dayblue gel on your tungsten sources.

A good general rule is cheat towards the warm side, i.e. turn your card more towards the outside source before balancing. This will neutralize more of the blue. Of course, you can do the opposite when you want to intentially give a cooler look to your scene.

Over all, I don't use the preset function. I always white balance manually to paint the scene how I like. So far I've not had a problem with the WB changing when I shut down.

P.S. when doing Dusk and Dawn shoots, be very careful not to ruin the feel by over white balancing and ruining the natural look. But your white balance will change quickly in the first and last 1/2 to 1 hour of the day.
Having a VERY slight blue and orange "white card" can help you retain the integrity of the scenes.
Best of luck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top