Let's talk about white balance and colour

[Paul Jones]

We had a few questions and comments at the critique session today about white balance settings and the use of colour for creativity.

Please check out my latest blog post (Warning - contains some glamour images)

'Let's talk about white balance and colour'
http://www.pauljones.org/?p=1643



What's your take on how you use white balance / creative colour?

[John]

My solution to colour balance is very simple. I shoot JPEG images and set the appropriate white balance as required.

For normal shooting Daylight setting gives a neutral/warm image, but also records the actual colour of the ambient light. I don't want a red sunset to be corrected to a neutral effect.

A warmer effect would be the Cloudy setting, which gives an effect very similar to the 81A warming filter with film.

Shade under a blue sky can give a very blue/purple cast to a subject in the shadows, so the Shade setting corrects this.

Mixed lighting, such as a disco, a situation that was mentioned in yesterday's workshop, can be happily taken care of with AWB. There is no neutral position with this type of event, so we may as well accept whatever it throws at us.

This doesn't really stress me too much as when we used film the choice was Daylight or Tungsten balances films. So you bought the type of film that gave you the results you wanted, maybe using a filter such as the 81A that I favoured.

After all this of course we can still tweak it all with the Photo Filter tool in Photoshop.

[Paul Jones]

Good observation John. And your approach comes with experience of knowing what works.

[al c field]

You can also set the white balance by a set button one on your camera
Regards Al c field

[Paul Jones]

You can also set the white balance by a set button one on your camera
Regards Al c field

Thanks Alasdair.