Correct White Balancing Technique

[eager2learn]

I'd sure appreciate any tips on the Correct White Balancing Technique to use (currently have a Sony TRV-900...but may rent an XL1S or VXD-2000, etc. for a project).

Supposedly, aren't all these cameras auto-white balancing? Somewhere I read you just need to hold a white board up for 5 or 10 seconds, but methinks there is more to it than this...and perhaps different for outdoors vs. indoors and fluorescent lighting conditions?

Thanks very much.

 

[filmmaker58]

They do have auto white balance settings, but like all auto settings, you should probably learn to not rely on them. For instance, if you are going for a strong blue backlight in a shot. The auto white will automatically correct for the blue light and you'll lose the effect. If you go manual, there are usually presets for daylight and tungsten, and these are usually good to use, but if you need to, you can white balance. This is a good idea when shooting under florescents that often have a green spike, or Mercury Vapors, or any other lighting with strange properties. Point the camera at a white card that is illuminated by the dominant light source, and push the white balance button. I often cheat the white balance on a camera. I have a gel sample booklet from Gamcolor called a "jungle book". If you want a warmer look, put a 1/8 or 1/4 blue in front of the lens when balancing. If you want it blue, balance with a 1/2 CTO. I've seen people get a great sepiatone look by white balancing a camera on a light blue 1" tape case (hard to find these days)

 

[NicklausLouis]

Agreed!

Never use the auto white balance mode. As a news photographer, I've gotten use to always white balancing manually. At one of the stations I used to work at, some of the reporters were one-man-bands (they shot, edited, and reported), they used auto white balancing cameras. If I had a nickel for every time they came back with screwy color, well, I'd only have about enough for an ice cream cone, but still, don't use auto anything if you can do it manually.

Poke

 

[film8ker]

Auto white balancing is for joe blow who wants to point and shoot. Filmmaker58 described it correctly. The manual should tell you this also. One note, most cameras use only a selected portion of the screen for white balancing not the whole field of view (by the way the same is true for auto focus). Usually it’s a diagonal line that is approximately 2/3 of the diagonal length of the CCD. It can be left or right depending on the manufacturer. Some cameras use a more advanced method that has a pattern of rectangles in a horizontal line or like the number 5 on a dice. However since you don’t know exactly where the camera looks to white balance it’s a good idea to fill the screen completely with a pure white source. Personally I always keep a pure white blank sheet of paper in my set notebook safely kept within a plastic sheet protector. That way if the plastic gets marks on it I can still take the paper out, use it, and return it to the notebook. One trick if all you have is a piece of paper with a few stray marks on it is to zoom into the white card until the entire frame is filled then throw it out of focus and then press the white balance button. The marks will disappear and the CCD will see white. Note: some cameras require you to hold the white balance button for a set period of time usually 3 to 5 seconds.

 

[eager2learn]

Thank you all so much for the very helpful info!!!

Wish I could find my Sony Manual, however, when I initially got the camera I found it HIGHLY deficient in general. I own a lot of Sony products and their manuals all suck, unfortunately. My past experience with their "Tech Support" has been a bunch of untrained people, who try to read from the same junk and keep you on hold looking for an answer with a 50/50 success rate. Maybe things have improved recently.

Great equipment, terrible manuals (IMHO). So I'll do some experimenting based upon the posted suggestions.