Color balance is the adjustment of the intensities of the color. White balancing your shot means that the whites look white, and your overall video does not have a blue or yellow tint to it. To do this, data is acquired by sensors to transform values to new values. This can either reduce or exaggerate the color intensity. Color balance is crucial to perfecting your images and videos. Here are three suggestions to perfectly color balance your camera.
1) Different light sources have different colors
Knowing what type of light to shoot with is important to the outcome. The main colors used for filming are generally tungsten and daylight. Tungsten is more of a yellow light usually used for indoor appliances. Tungsten lights are most commonly used at low temperatures, which creates the effect of indoor lighting. Daylight is designed to give you accurate colors outdoors. Daylight has more of a blue color temperature. Knowing the difference between these two types of light can help with color correction before you film your videos.
2) Use only one type of light color when filming
Tungsten is the typical household lightbulb. Daylight is white light that includes all the hues of the color spectrum, but especially blue. When filming in a room with both natural light and overhead lights, you get two different color temperatures on the camera at once. This means the camera will over exaggerate one color to compensate for the other. To avoid this, make sure you only have one type of light when filming. Either close all of your windows and only use Tungsten light bulbs, or turn off all of your lights and only use natural lighting. As a note, daylight is free and energy-efficient. Amateur and low-budget filmmakers like to shoot outdoors when possible to take advantage of natural sunlight.
3) Use a white sheet of paper to auto white-balance your camera before filming
Using a white sheet of paper will set your camera up for custom white balance. This will allow your camera to read the light off of the paper and set your white balance accordingly. There are other ways to set your white balance on your camera, however this method is a quick, easy way to set custom balance without having to dial in specific temperatures.
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