How to White Balance
An important step in film making that every person should know is the process of white balancing a shot.
What is White Balance you ask? To put it simply, it’s the process of telling the camera what the color white looks like, so the camera will adjust the other colors accordingly. This way you will get a nice shot that isn’t too yellow or too blue… it’s as natural looking as possible.
To white balance you follow these steps:
1) Set you camera to manual
2) Point your camera to an object that is pure white, such as a piece of paper, and zoom in until the entire frame is filled with white.
3) Focus and set your desired exposure
4) Press the white balance button or switch on your camera. Usually it takes a few seconds to adjust at which point the camera should give you some sort of signal that the white balance is complete. White balancing can vary from camera to camere to make sure to read the manual.
Here is an example I found via Google:
As you can see, the image on top is not properly white balanced. It is far too blue. The image on the bottom is perfect. Colors pop and overall the image has a very warm and realistic touch — the way it was in reality when the shot was taken. (I should point out though that the blue may also be something you want — so it isn’t necessarily wrong.)
Remember, take the time to white balance or else you’re going to be spending time color correcting your footage in post. And while this may help, it won’t completely fix your color to the point it would be at had you white balanced your shots.
One Response to “How to White Balance”
Posted by: fikri - 05/02/2008
I always forget to do this, but half the time, I don’t really mind having the odd-ish effect anyway…
Great site. Keep it up.
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