White Balance - what will you do?

[Lunchbox]

What will you do...

At an event, the ballroom has sufficient lights. However, the lights cast a yellow-ish tint to everything. Will you manually set the white balance so the white looks "white"? or you leave it the way it is to accurately reflect what is in the scene?

[Terfyn]

I would go for the Tungsten setting or pull the white balance manually. You could adjust the overall colour temperature in post production.
My Reason:- If you have the best raw footage, it is easier to apply effects. When you are filming, everything is immediate and cannot be altered. Sitting in front of a VDU allows a considered approach. You can test effects and return to the original at any time.

[JoeInBH]

I would think the client would prefer it cleaned up a bit (less yellow). At the risk of sounding unprofessional, why not just run it by the client? Although if it's a wedding you're talking about, another decision is probably the last thing they want right now.

[Lunchbox]

That's exactly right, running these by clients would be a bad idea and sound unprofessional when these are weddings.

[Ian-T]

I agree with Terfyn.

[24Peter]

My (somewhat limited) wedding experience is to custom white balance for each lighting condition. (I think even custom white balancing under the conditions Taky describes will still yield a warmer tone - it will never be blue-white.) But, again in my limited experience, it's easier to add color later to make the scene warmer than to try to take a poorly white balanced scene and bring it back to a more neutral white.

[zephyrnoid]

Color balance is my middle name. Use a white card to custom balance to each environment. The cute little diffusers are wrong and they take the whole scene into consideration. You really ought only to balance FOR the most important subject and let the background be a little different in balance. Also, a neutral balance is one less step you have to take care of in post. I go as far as shooting 5 seconds of a Color chart for cross referencing the RBG/YMYK to a known quantity as well.
Auto balance is pretty good for a default BTW, just in case you ever have a fast shot to take and don't have the time to manually balance.

[veg]

or to put it another way....
What will you do...

At an event, the Brothel/Disco has sufficient lights. However, the lights cast a Red-ish tint to everything. Will you manually set the white balance so the white looks "white"? or you leave it the way it is to accurately reflect what is in the scene?

[Lunchbox]

oh thats cute :)

You didn't "put" it another way. It's the exact same way I asked. :)

[veg]

Taky...
I substituted your "Ballroom in yellow" for a "Brothel/Disco in Red".
Point being ...that if you were shooting a wedding scene for a movie (4 Weds & a Funeral e.g.) and the Lighting Cameraman or Lighting Director decided it was going to be lit with red gels (colour doesn't really matter), would you, the camera operator, CC it back to white?.
Terfyns post is correct. Colour Balance the camera to 3200K...and if the room is yellow, its yellow, if blue it's blue, if red it's red. THEN if you think it looks crap in post, then you can CC and if the bride thinks her dress has been changed from the subtle yellow of her choice to 'HV-20 white' then you will always be able to show her pure (as far as HV-20 goes) footage on your own monitor setup of her venue lighting. ( Good point here, I would suggest that you really do take time to discuss details, like lighting, with your bride beforehand rather than..."running these by clients would be a bad idea"
3200K(Tungsten) and 5600K (Daylight) are always your friends and insurance. Anything that looks slightly tinted with these settings could be down to many things, not least the viewers monitor setup
(Why do we use different colour temperature Lights/Gels anyway?.)
veg.

[john robertson]

OK so I am of the opinion that the footage should look as closely as possible to what my naked eye sees, therefore since a white piece of paper looks yellow under tungsten, how do I white balance to reflect that?

I've been having a hard time with this because to me the tungsten setting looks greenish, and If I white balance to white under the main (tungsten) light what I'm getting in the camera doesn't reflect what my naked eye sees

I did some experiments white balancing to diverse tonalities in my computer monitor and while it was interesting I couldn't nail the natural look of the room

[1]

You can get a set of "WarmCards (http://hv20.com/www.warmcards.com)" or print your own, that way you can "white" balance to various tones.

[1]

Also keep in mind that our own built-in white-balance is superior to a camera's.

Our eyes and brain do a great job of fooling us into thinking something looks the way it does! :)

[voodeux]

I had a similar situation with a high-dollar wedding in a ballroom pipe & draped with white muslin...all lit by purple cans (uplight and spotlights). The only 'white' light in the room was the pin-spots on the tables, just about in the center. Since the tables were also draped in lavender and purple, there wasn't much white light reflecting on the guests faces. Even a white card would have been of little help. Since I planned on using my on-camera fill light for the 'proper' white, I set my white balance to my LED light (daylight balanced, thankfully!) and let the room wash in purple. Anytime someone was lit by my camera, their faces were perfect...but out of range made them go a bit red. Its somewhat of a trade-off (or you can call it an 'artistic decision').

What made it interesting is that my Sony DSR-390 doesn't have a color viewfinder. I busted out the HV30 to double check on the color LCD and was pleased with what I had. The little guy saved me much time in post.

[CanonA1]

My HV20 tends to be too green even when manually white balancing it. My older SOny digital 8 units didn't exhibit this problem. The picture looks fine in the viewfinder or screen on the camera but in computer and TV needs some tweaking. Is this other people's experiences?

[Duke]

I agree with Mal. The people in the wedding are going to think every thing is a normal white color. They won't see the difference in real life since their brain will CC for them.

If you come back with a yellow dress and yellow teeth they will have a fit and not know why you ruined their precious wedding video.

I'd manual white balance then see if I needed to CC afterward.
Duke

[Lunchbox]

That didn't work for for me this particular client. They picked this restaurant because of the lighting, all heavy yellow. They love it that way.

http://hottaky.com/hv20/patina.jpg

[Erik Bien]

Put me down in the camp that prefers a manual white balance. Fancy targets are fine, but in a pinch, a tight closeup of anything reasonably white and lit by whatever I'm considering key light will do.

Given the brutal chroma compression to which HDV subjects my footage, I'd rather come home with whites looking white and people looking healthy and add "atmosphere" in post. I'm afraid if the bride in Taky's example changed her mind and wanted a less yellow look, boosting the always noisy blue channel to accommodate her whim might get pretty ugly.

[voodeux]

By the way, an object doesn't have to be clean white to white balance. Neutral greys work just as well. My preference is to white balance where the majority of my shots will be. Therefore, in the posted photo, I'd be balancing on a white card at the table closest to camera position, and let the the window light skew even more blue.

[veg]

I agree with Mal. The people in the wedding are going to think every thing is a normal white color. They won't see the difference in real life since their brain will CC for them.
Exactly!.
In the wedding their eyes will autocorrect.
However we're talking about when they watch the DVD replay after the event. Not, "REAL LIFE". Why make 'Yellow', 'White'?
veg.

[lordtangent]

Because they SAW white when they were at the wedding! If they look at the video later and the brides dress and teeth are yellow and the groom looks ruddy and drunk, it's not going to jive with how they remember it being when they were there.

I would at least white balance to make the wedding dress look white under the bulk of the lighting in the room. Make the video look as close to how a persons eyes would see it as you can and there will be no issues with the client rejecting the work.

Maybe for a feature film there would be times when you would let the light LOOK like the color temp it actually is. (Warmer or cooler), red brothel, etc. But for WHITE BALANCE, meaning lights that are NOT a special effect but are the main light illuminating the scene, it's common practice to not let light sources get more than 1000-1500k apart from each other. Granted, that is not always possible in a lot of documentary situations. But I mention it since the more conservative approach is usually the practice even in movie lighting unless a very specific effect is desired.

Takys screen grab is an excellent example of what you get otherwise. Lucky for him the client was ok with the look. Most lay people don't ever want to hear the "why" of anything, even when it's stuff like physics that you have no control over! The last thing you ever want to have to do is explain tthe client why the stuff "looks bad". They don't care. They just want ot to look good. And since we all know how to make it look good why not just make it "look good" in the first place?

[Lunchbox]

I wasn't just lucky about that. It was the client specifically asked for me and the photographer not not changing the white balance. So we both agreed to capture just the way it was.

[overstreet1983]

Well, an all yellow video kind of screams amateur to me ... I don't know why they would ask you to do that, it's just ugly ...

[Lunchbox]

I don't think it screams ameteur. Ugly or not is a matter of taste. I saw their engagement photos, almost all of them are out of focus, looking angry or showing no emotion. pictures are all pixelated. It's their style. Again, that's why they picked that restaurant because they like the mood. As a videographer to document their event, it's important to reflect the reality especially requsted by customers.

[madmaxmedia]

This talk about being true to the actual scene is extremely problematic, due to the difference between actual color and PERCEIVED color. As others have said, our brains do our own little color correction on us. That is why artificial lights look worse captured by a camera than they do to our own eyes. It's really arbitrary to say which is more accurate, if anything our perception is 'off' so the question is how do you want to deal with that?

The analogy of the lighting director using gels for a movie doesn't really apply here either, as the artistic purpose is different.

As a general rule of thumb, the best thing to do here is to white balance with a white card. If you then want to make it look different in post, go ahead. But yeah, the best thing to do is to discuss it with the wedding party beforehand. Make sure you keep in mind the above though- what humans perceive is not going to exactly match what is going to be recorded to tape (if you don't correct for white balance.)

I think there will be times where you want to mostly counteract any color cast in a scene, but not 100%. I'm thinking of say photographs or video during a winter scene having that frosty blue look, or sunsets have that warm orange glow. But you can always get that back in post too.

[lordtangent]

I wasn't just lucky about that. It was the client specifically asked for me and the photographer not not changing the white balance. So we both agreed to capture just the way it was.

I didn't mean"lucky" as to imply you accidentally shot it that way and they didn't care it ended up looking yellow. I assume you know what you are doing.

I meant "lucky" that you had such un-critical clients your were able to kind of split the difference between the white balance of daylight outside and the yellow flo lights inside. That's a really tricky lighting situation.

If their choice had been to have you white balance for the inside to look correct it sill would have looked crazy because of all the daylight coming though the window. The daylight probably would have ended up looking some super saturated blue.

[lordtangent]

By the way, an object doesn't have to be clean white to white balance. Neutral greys work just as well. My preference is to white balance where the majority of my shots will be. Therefore, in the posted photo, I'd be balancing on a white card at the table closest to camera position, and let the the window light skew even more blue.

Oh... I got in a big debate about this with a buddy of mine. He kept saying: "But gray isn't white. How can you white balance from it?" DOEH! I spent half an hour trying to explain it...and when I was finally worn out he just said... "whatever" (like he still didn't believe me)

Well, I'm happy to report that light neutral gray does work. But it must be a true neutral gray. It works really well in that case. In fact, actual WHITE is what you want to avoid since if it clips, you can forget about ever pulling a decent white balance from it.

I use a "Whibal" card but you can find cheaper versions of the same thing on eBay. It's a light gray white reference card you can used for white balancing digital still cameras or your video cam. There are also "warm cards" on the market that white balance to a warmer temp by having a slight blue tint. I never bothered buying one of those. I just made one myself. (I figured, it's not a "true white" anyway, so who cares if it's actually accurate?)

[Lunchbox]

That was an extreme case. This is another photo shooting from the window to the inside. Notice the inner room, because of the heavy yellow light fixture, it's all one tone.

http://hottaky.com/hv20/yellow1.jpg

http://hottaky.com/hv20/yellow2.jpg

http://hottaky.com/hv20/yellow3.jpg

Manual white balance will not work.

[mattias]

Oh... I got in a big debate about this with a buddy of mine. He kept saying: "But gray isn't white. How can you white balance from it?"
haha, reminds me of a science experiment we did in grade school (tell him that if he thinks your explanation is too complicated) where we painted the inside of a box white, yet when we cut a small hole and looked in it was perfectly black, until we opened it and it was white again. magic.

/matt

[Ian-T]

Well, I'm happy to report that light neutral gray does work. But it must be a true neutral gray. It works really well in that case. In fact, actual WHITE is what you want to avoid since if it clips, you can forget about ever pulling a decent white balance from it.

I use a "Whibal" card but you can find cheaper versions of the same thing on eBay. It's a light gray white reference card you can used for white balancing digital still cameras or your video cam.... I've been meaning to pick up that whibal card. But for the last few months I've been using a cheap 18% grey card. I can't believe the difference it made in my overall video. Not only does the colors look better....but unless my eyes are deceiving me (and I have 20-15 vision)...it seems there is less noise in my picture. I'm not sure if white balancing makes a difference there but i have been very pleased.