Custom White Balance

posted by SteveFE, Jan 14, 2007 12:23 AM — 10 comments

Custom White Balance is actually dead easy to use and a great thing to learn as it'll help you loads.

First, before taking any proper pics, if you're in any sort of dodgy light (which in Canon terms is anything other than broad daylight), you take a picture of anything white or light grey using Auto White Balance, in the ambient light (e.g. indoors under tungsten or fluorescent lights), shoot a pic of a sheet of blank white paper, or if you're a techie, use an 18% greycard. If you have neither to hand but the ceiling of the room you're in is white or off-white, shoot that, somewhere near the light source. Or hold a translucent Pringles lid over the end of your lens and point it somewhere near the light (you can buy fancy expensive things called Expodiscs that are a slightly more sophisticated version of the Pringles lid). Doesn't matter if the shot's in focus or any of that malarkey, you just need it for a colour reference.

Once you've done that, select Custom White Balance in the menu and the camera will ask which image you want to use. Select your white shot, confirm it and set the White Balance to Custom. Job done! Everything you take from now on will be balanced to the available light, people will be more or less people coloured and not look like sunbed and bottle-tanned aliens. If you move to different lighting conditions you'll have to change it again.

I don't know how cameras other than Canon set CWB, but it must be similar.

Custom White Balance is a real saviour if you're shooting in JPG mode, as colour casts are tricky to remove. It's easier if you're shooting in raw mode as you can adjust the colour temperature in post-processing, but if you get it right first time it's a lot less work, especially if you have lots of pics to process. Do try it. It's actually a lot quicker and easier than I've made it sound. I can do it in about a fiftieth of the time it took to type the explanation.