Manual White Balance

D

dvxnewbie

Member
How do you do a Manual White Balance? I can't find anything in the owners manual on how to set it. P.S. I'm doing this to follw Barry G's advice on getting the red tint out of the picture.

Thanks!!
 
Take a white card (or a white piece of paper will do) and place it so that the light that is hitting your subject is hitting the card. Zoom in on that card as much as you can (if you can fill the viewfinder with the card, do it). Switch the white balance switch on the left side of the camera to either the "A" or "B" position (it doesn't matter which) and press the AWB button (at the front of the camera, just below the lens). The camera viewfinder will read "OK" and you should be good to go.
 
Thanks! That is what I do already (and had an idea that it would be considered manually white balancing) but since it's called Automatic White Balance, the word manual threw me. However, the red tint is still there on the skin tone. Any other ways to get rid of it or just live with it?
 
You could try raising the Chroma Temp control in your Scene File to shift away from red and more toward blue. It might do the trick for ya.
 
Make sure that your white balance switch is set to A or B and not prst (preset) That one is set for daylight and won't change if you manually white balance. If your indoors and lighting with halogens, your image will lean more towards the red tones on the prst setting, and trying to set it manually won't change anything.
 
It may have to do with your lighting as some others have mentioned. Without seeing a grab it's difficult to offer a correction. Is it possible you're mixing light and are white balanced to mostly daylight, but you characters are lit with tungsten light? If this is the case, you just 1/2 blue gel your lights.
 
Hey Vjbrennan,
Are you talking about the 100 or the 100a when you say the preset is set for daylight. I know for a fact that on the 100a the preset can toggle between 3200k and 5600k if you hit the "Manual" White Balance button while switched to preset.

Also, dvxnewbie,
I believe that "manual" white balance on pretty much any camera is still called Automatic White Balance....now Auto-Tracing White Balance is different and probably closer to what you're thinking of as "automatic". Confusing as hell, but as long as you press the AWB button while you're switched to A or B it will white balance the camera.

One last thing while we're talking about the AWB button. If you hold the button down it will black balance the camera. There's some debate about how necessary black balancing is, but I find it makes my pictures much less muddy.

-Ryan
 
One more thing.
I'm not sure just how much red you're looking to take out of the picture, but if you're trying to get a really "cold" blue, try white-balancing on your hand. It will give you a very bleak blue look. If you're just trying to take out a little blue, use HorseFilms method of lowering the Color Temp setting.

-Ryan
 
Ryan,

I was talking about the "A" and of course you are right. I just never toggle to 3200 in the preset because I usually have a few home depot halogens of various size thrown in my mix. Those color temps aren't usually very accurate, so I usually Manually WB for those set-ups. The main reason I brought that up was that I went crazy trying to manually WB in the preset setting. I was lighting with halogens and the preset was on 5600. Everything looked very red and orange and no matter how many times I pressed that WB button, nothing changed. I though my camera was broken :beer:
 
Haha, Its always the littlest switch or button that throws your stuff off ain't it? The last thing you think of, like making sure the computer is plugged in when it won't turn on:) Sorry to call ya out, just wanted the newb to get the most out of his camera.

-Ryan
 
It seems to have a red tint (only on skin tones) whether I'm inside with the regular 100 watt light bulbs or outside.
 
Weird dude. Did you try white balancing the way we all told you? And the red tint is still there? Who's your subject, Pippi Longstocking?

_1786957_stocking150.jpg
????
 
Nope, haven't tried it yet. The pesky "real world" got in the way of my "want world". Actually I clicked the reply button to post a reply to Icarus2005's lighting question but it didn't work as I thought. I sure appreciate all of the response from everyone. Thanks!!
 
If you are mixing light, it is best to hold the white card/ board at an angle. White balance on this to get both sources of light, and the camera will average them.

Any confirmations?
 
I dunno Bikefilms. I think it depends on what you're going for with mixing the light. If you white balance the way you suggested it will probably give you somewhere in the 4-4500K range lessening the effect of both tungsten and daylight sources as colors. Yes, if you are mixing light and you don't want it to "look" like it, then white balance your way. If you are mixing light for aesthetic reasons and you want to have both the blue from the daylight and the orange from practical tungsten lamps, then you should just white balance to your keylight (light on the subject for the newb:)) and go from there.
 
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