The Importance of White Balance (light & color temperature)

Advanced Videography students: yes, we are only at the beginning but it's important to understand light while we are just working with cameras. I don't want you to white balance the camera just because I tell you that you need to do it, but I want you to understand why!

See this tutorial, "Understanding White Balance" (aimed at primarily digital still photography but the principals still apply for videography). I think that their image examples are pretty clear:


Here's another (longer) article about white balance for video that includes photos, definitions, and pretty good explanations of the theory and practice of white balance and color temperature.

Make sure you can manually set the white balance on ALL the cameras the we are using for class!

This week: SONY HDV and JVC HM100

Also, in class I mentioned that the SONY PD150 and PD170s have 3CCD and that the HDV has a CMOS censor. Here's a great article from Videomaker magazine on CMOS vs. CCD (you just have to join - it's free). Also, here's another article on CMOS and CCD sensors, and one more (highly technical) from hdtv Read up!