Lessons from a Film Student –White Balance/Colour Temperature

My name is Maggie and I’m a first year film student in Toronto, Canada at Humber College. My program is not simply a film theory program, though there is some; it’s mainly focused on practical work. Everyone these days can make films with the availability of cameras and editing software increasing, which I think is a good thing. I’m here to share with you the knowledge I’ve gained from school to help improve your own film making with some simple tips and knowledge. On to the lesson.

Have you ever been shooting something outside and it was really blue or you were inside and it looked very orange? The answer is that you aren’t white balanced properly. Your camera will most likely have a button or an option in it’s menu to white balance, so check the manual for this. The best way to fix your white balance is to zoom in on a white piece of paper and click the white balance button or choose the option in your menu and you should see a change in the colour of the picture, hopefully for the better. The majority of  consumer camera have auto white balance this is ok but it doesn’t look as good as when you do it manually. That is how you fix the problem below is some of the theory as to why this works.

The source of the light makes a difference to the colour of your picture.

There are two basic sources of light:

Daylight (The sun)

Tungsten (Regular incandescent light bulb)

There is a secondary one that you have to be more aware of these days

Fluorescent

The camera sees these different sources of light with different colour temperatures (measured in Degrees Kelvin or “K”)

Daylight is seen as Blue (~6500K)

Tungsten is seen as Orange (~3200K)

Fluorescent is seen as Green (~3600K – 5700K)

So the camera mainly sees light as either Blue or Orange.

Fluorescent is sort of it’s own weird thing and is seen as green.

When white balancing outside the camera compensates for all of the blue light by adding orange and vice versa when white balancing inside in tungsten light.  This is why when you move from outside to inside the picture looks so orange; the camera is still adding orange. The way the camera compensates for fluorescent light (which gives a green cast) is that it adds magenta.

The Camera Compensates:

Daylight by adding Orange

Tungsten by adding Blue

Fluorescent by adding Magenta

You can add artistry to your film making by taking advantage of this camera quirk.

Let’s say that you want everything to look green (like in the Matrix) use the manual white balance and focus on something that is Magenta and when you turn away the picture will look green. The more vibrant the magenta you balance on the stronger the green will be.  Same applies to blue and orange. You can experiment white balancing on different colours and see what different effects you can get; remember that the stronger the colour you balance on the stronger the effect will be.

This is a simple way to add effects to you film with out editing software and ultimately in camera effects look better than post production ones. By understanding a few simple concepts you can ramp up your production quality.

- Geeks_Only