White Balance Mystified !!!

H

HaroonGhauree

Active member
This thread will help people like me to understand White Balance as it should be...

White Balance on one hand is a great help to achieve a certain look i.e. tint (i guess). But on the other hand White Balance would be a big confusion (at-least for me) when goes beyond. To me the technical knowledge behind White Balance is quite clear, its may be the interpretation or philosophical understanding which goes wrong :-( ...

Definition: White Balance a shot means "We show camera "The White" in a color casted (temperature) scene"

Effect: The camera upon White Balancing knows the real white shown to it (which appears in a shade due to the color-cast in the scene). The camera then calculates the difference between the Scene White and the 'Absolute White' and changes the whole scene color-cast accordingly. As a result what appears yellowish-white appears more white after white balancing and similarly all the other colors in the scene are shifted on the same scale as the yellowish-white changes to more white.

How to Perform: The is a AWB button in front-left-down to Lens. In a scene find a White Object (a white card can also be used instead) and zoomed into it to completely fill the eye/LCD viewfinder. Press the AWB button the Camera acknowledges and you will see the shaded white turns to a much better white. This is also known as manual White Balance.

Tip: White Balance every-time before start recording. If there are like 100 scenes/shots, there must be 100 white balances.

Using Preset WB vs. Manual WB vs. Automatic WB:
Preset WB: Must only be performed when there is a controlled lighting environment (usually the controlled lighting is done indoor).
Auto WB: Usually OK but in complex compositions the neutral point (White) may not be present or so shaded that the overall Auto WB gives wrong Color-Cast.
Manual WB: Great for indoor or outdoor where the Neutral point (White) is controlled by the filmmaker.

Color Temperature: Throughout a day the key light (sun-outdoor, other-indoor) causes different casts. Like at rising and setting the cast is orange, morning-blue, day-yellowish etc. This is called color-temperature. The color temperature varies from red to violet as it rises and vice versa. Interestingly we call warm for red which is technically lowest temperature and cool for blue which is high.

Problems: I have several philosophical (may be technical) problems with White Balancing I will explain them with an example:

Eg. I'm in the magic hour (1hour before sun rise/set). Everything looks quite warm and perfectly shootable. I have my camera with me. I want to capture the color temperature exactly as it is. But due to wrong Auto WB and not suitable Preset conditions I'm forced to get a manual WB. Hence the start of my problems:

1- When I take manual WB out of the scene. The scene appears to be drifted away from that great Warm look. Why can't I have "NO WB" option ?

2- White Balance tends to balance the color-cast/temperature of the whole scene relative to the difference between the shown white and absolute white (may be 18% grayscale). Why can't I have exact composition as I'm seeing ?

3- I know there are tricks (in-fact harnessing the power of white balance) to make a composition more warm or cool, but here I'm talking about getting clean and straight composition. I'm unable to grab the idea of capturing exactly the same composition which my eyes are seeing in the magic hour i.e. warm look without performing any white balance tricks.

4- What If I don't want WB at all ! I just want to take a composition no matter how bad or good it comes out to be. When I'm saying no WB it also includes no previous WB etc. Is there a "NO WB !!! " option ?

Thanks -

Any Suggestions ...
 
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Hm,
I can´t give a technical explanation, but for that magic hour shot using the daylight preset should give you just about that colorshift from the daylight preset your experiencing with your eyes...
Secondly WB is of course only one factor affecting colorrendition of a scene, so your problem could derive from sth else...
Those DPs who like to achieve their vision of a scene as close as possible in-camera (as opposed to tweaking colors in post...) usually will work out an individual scenefile for a project or even for ervey scene...
 
I don't really know how to respond to your post Haroon... Your not really making any point, or asking a question, besides if it's possible to not use a WB at all, (which the answer to is NO) so I don't quite see what your looking for here.

Heres something I found in your post that I can give you an answer for, like Spartacus has-

What If I don't want WB at all ! I just want to take a composition no matter how bad or good it comes out to be. When I'm saying no WB it also includes no previous WB etc. Is there a "NO WB !!! " option ?
Click to expand...

Alright. Here we go.

Like you said, WB is determined within the camera, by what the CCD's are seeing as "true white" of the scene, basically whatever shade you put up, it will take as white. SOMETHING has to be taken into account as white, which means you always have to have a WB of some kind. So in seeing "true white," it color shifts everything in accordance with "true white." To solve your problem about not being able to capture the golden colors, you need to know the technical reason why, so that you can understand it for yourself, in the future.

When you are shooting this situation, (golden hour) you are dealing with very low color temperatures, sometimes as low as 1200K, 1300K, etc. Knowing this, on a temp chart we know that is far below tungsten (3200K)... Reverting back, we know that WB'ing to 3200K in tungsten light will ultimately make our shot "white" and WB'ing to 5600 (daylight) outside will also make our scene "white."

So shooting an exterior, and WB'ing (or using a preset) for 5600K during golden hour (3000k) will obviously warm up our tones, seeing as how it is looking for that daylight temperature to be white, even though our actual light is MUCH warmer. This can be used in any other variation as well, like WB'ing to 3200k and shooting in daylight, usually at night, for a very blue "cold" look.

The great thing about WB is that it can be fooled. The use of cool/warm cards on set can be extremely handy for adding a little warmth, or cool tone to a shot. By WB'ing to a 1/2 blue, you can introduce some yellow-ish orange into your shot. Vice versa with 1/2 orange, etc. etc. This works on the same principal as shooting in 3200K or 5600K, or something completely different, like 4400K. (floros)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_balance

http://www.warmcards.com/

Hope this helps.
 
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I always wondered why pro cameras don't give you an option to maually tweak the WB by raising the color temp reading incrementally by 50 degrees to achieves warm/cool looks without needing cards on hand... I think there is color temp option on some some cams, but it's just a -7 through +7.. no real accurate reading...
 
not on my xh A1:)

you can adjust the color temp by the hundreds from 2800 to really really high. ( make everything very orange )

i normally use the daylight and tungsten presets though. I lreaned that once i learned how to control light, this was the best option and allowed the most range for color grading. This way, my colors are consitant among a scene and dont change subtly.
 
I'm 101% agree with Spartacus & Andrew advice and concern of arges03. But my real concern was not understood (if I'm not wrong).

I know the tweaking involved in the Manual WB to achieve a warm(by telling blue lie) or cool(by telling warm lie) look. I can understand the color-shade used to WB results in its negative in the footage color-cast (correct me if I'm wrong here).

Its not about getting a warm look somehow by tweaking the WB and Scene File settings. Its about getting the actual cast (which may not be absolute via WB and scene file tweaking). I can always get a warm look by proving its cold out there. But this may not reporoduce the actual warmness out there what my eyes are seeing. Though I may be closer enough to mimic.

I hope I'm clear this time !
 
A friend of mine just said what we see through our naked eyes is already "white balanced" naturally (as God has planted a perfect auto WB chip into our heads). While a film or digital camera requires a neutral reference to compose according to our naked eye vision. Is it a correct statement ?

I still want a technical or theoretical nod over the straight WB or getting the absolute composition (ignore the electro-mechanical change done to the shot) in-camera as it's present outside !
 
I wonder why there is no reply after being watched by so many people ... Anyway there I go again with some more questions ;-) or some tips ...

Tip: Always use same White-Card/Reference to manual WB before all scenes for a given project.

E.g. I select a scene file to customize. I made changes to it for a certain look ...

Q. Whenever I select my custom scene file and after its selection I white balance the composition ... Is it gonna look synchronized with the whole project footage ? ... As I'm using the same scene file settings and the same white-reference throughout the whole project ...
 
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