When WBing is appropriate

N

north45co

Member
I recently shot some footage in a recording studio. the light in the studio had a yellow/ orangish tint to it. I was always told to white balance before I shot anything. When I white balanced in the studio the yellow light turned white as expected, however, it wasn't the true accurate color of the room (as I saw through my eyes). Are there times when white balancing is not appropriate? I have footage of both ways (pre and post white balancing) if you would like me to upload them.

Thanks,

Ian
 
Generally, most people will say, whenever you are about to begin shooting, white balance, or whenever the lighting changes, white balance. A lot of times, that is a good method to practice. However, I think that, especially in your situation, it comes down to a personal thing. Are you trying to more accurately represent how the studio was when you shot? Do you want something that has less of a color tint to it? At least from the way you describe it, it sounds like something you'd have to make the final decision on.

Out of curiosity, I'd like to see the footage that you have of before and after white balancing.
 
Think of white balancing used to correct light you do NOT want in your film. A good time might be when you're in a place using fluorescent lights that you don't have balanced bulbs for. Chances are you don't want the off-white green/violet look of some flou bulbs so you white balance. If you're like Nancy Schreiber and shooting November, you leave it unbalanced and use the green tint as artistic atmosphere (not saying I liked it, but as an example.)

I, personally, would either stick with tungsten or daylight presets and gel lights if I had the time, or go with a preset for the conditions I'm shooting in and correct in post if we're on a tight schedule. Remember that another useful time to balance would be if you wanted to alter the color of the image in camera. Balance through CTO or CTB of different densities and come out with an image that looks more orange or more blue. Obviously if you balance through CTB your image will look more warm, if balanced through CTO your image will be blue. Easy enough, right?

One time you might consider balancing would be if you were shooting a scene with a lot of red light. To keep it from artifacting, balance to a white card in the light then correct it to red in post. This would save your footage from artifacting due to the limited chroma sampling of the DV footage and you can still ultimately get your red shot.
 
North,

Your instincts are correct. To have the feel and mood of the tungsten or fluor lit room, you would set WB to daylight preset and then shoot in the room. Your lighting will, of course, be either cool or warm depending on the source, but as you say, that is what the room looks like.

You would WB if you were using studio lights and you wanted them to represent a daylight lighting temp.

Ex. You're shooting indoors and are using tungstens to represent the light coming in through a window. That "windowlight" is the only light (or there is light from other "windows"). In this case, you would either light then WB to that light temp, or you can gel, correcting the light itself to daylight. Even in that instance, I would WB to the corrected light and not trust it hits my DVX daylight preset.

Now, if you have tungsten "windolight" and tungsten practicals and ambience in the room, you dont want all your tungsten corrected to daylight. So if you WB to the "windowlight", now that reading lamo in the corner will be wghite also. That's not very natural looking. So you'd gel your windowlight to daylight temp, WB to that light source, then your uncorrected reading lamp will still register warm and add texture to the lighting.

Make sense?

-GageFX
 
Hey,

I thought I'd upload the pics so everyone could see what I mean. Thanks for the tips too, you all answered my question perfectly.

PRE-WB
winterland2.jpg





POST-WB
winterland1.jpg



Personally I liked the PRE-WB and ultimately went with that. (It seemed to have more depth, and it wasn't such a flat image).


Thanks again
 
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