Incorporating color temperature with white balance...

[nouou]

I am confused.

I have just learned the basics of color temperature. However, I do not understand how this incorporates with white balance. I have a DVX100A.

Let's say I have three 100w 2900k household lights I'm lighting my subject with, inside a house (3200K?). I have them setup to light the key, fill, and a backlight. Ok, so now what do I do with my camera. Do I use something white on my subject, zoom in on it, and then set my white balance? And this makes it so the colors will render naturally through the camera? Or am I supposed to just try and match the room temp (3200) with the lights i'm using (2900)? Someone please explain how these are connected

 

[Huy Vu]

Color temperature translates to how the camera will perceive the color of the light. Higher color temperature shows up as blue and lower color temperature shows up as orange. The purpose of white balance is to tell the camera what color temperature you would like it to read as white so you don't end up with unnaturally warm or cool color. Setting white balance to 3200K while having a 3200K light source and the camera will show that as white, but if you also have a 5600K light source in the scene (like sunlight coming through the window) then that's going to show up as bluish because you just shifted the color spectrum. It's entirely an aesthetic decision what you want to color balance to, but you do need to be careful when mixing color temperatures.