a brief explanation of white balance

8/8/2019 A Brief Explanation of White Balance

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I will be perfectly frank with you. I have been doing photography for sixty-three years and I never

heard the term white balance prior to the ascendency of digital photography. As a film photographer I

ruined many a photograph by shooting it on film that was balanced incorrectly for the light that I was

using. I wish that I could tell you that my short term memory dysfunction is a result of age and senility

but it’s not. I have always been able to easily forget what film I loaded into the camera the last time.

We only knew that we used tungsten balanced film when we were using tungsten or halogen lighting

and daylight balanced film when we were using daylight or flash—the world was so simple but also so

limiting. You people starting out with digital will never fully comprehend how good you’ve got it.

Why Are We Not More Aware Of the Color of Light?

As Anthony noted last night, our eyes have the ability to adjust for the varying colors of light. Let’s take

an example of a blond in a red sweater. Before we are very old we have seen blond haired women in

many different lighting situations, under light of many different Kelvin temperatures. The brain has

accumulated all those experiences and given us an “average” which is what we individually see as the

color of blond hair. As a result, when we see a blond, it doesn’t matter what the Kelvin temperature of

the light the brain signals us to see what we know is the color of blond hair and that is the way we see

it. That is not the way it is, it is simply the way we see it. In cool light blond hair will be very green, the

yellow of the hair added to the blue of the light. We don’t see green, we see blond. In warm light it willbe very orange, the yellow of the hair combined with the red of the light. The same thing goes for red.

We all have an averaged red and regardless of what the Kelvin temperature of the light we are going to

see our averaged red—the color we individually know as red. We are sophisticated enough to have

averages for all the varying shades of blond hair and for all the shades of red. We are pretty

sophisticated gadgets, unfortunately our cameras aren’t yet that sophisticated.

Photographic film or digital sensors do not have the luxury of having a brain so they must rely on us to

apply our knowledge in order to get the colors in our photographs to record correctly. Outdoors we

want to set our cameras on Sunlight, Open Shade or Shade depending upon the type of natural

sunlight that we are using. Indoors with incandescent lights we want to change the white balance to

Tungsten, Flash or Fluorescent.

Do We Always Have to Set the White Balance to the Type of Light?

If you want the colors in your photograph to be as true as your digital sensor is capable of capturing

the answer is a definite yes. For the truest colors the white balance setting on your camera has to

match the type of lighting that you are using. Of course you can always use Auto White Balance and

not be troubled with resetting it all the time. How well that will work will depend a great degree upon

the camera you are using. Some cameras so it fairly well; some are pretty poor. Neither will be as

consistently correct as sitting it yourself, but they will usually be workable most of the time.

In photography there is always a caveat. You can always use the wrong white balance setting for

creative purposes because we associate colors with emotions. If you want a warm glow, a coziness, a

homeliness, a comfortableness even a sensuality to your photographs set the white balance on your

camera to a higher number than the true Kelvin temperature of the light. For example to shoot indoors

under incandescent lighting, set the white balance to daylight and your models will literally glow with

warmth, heat, sensuality. If you want the photograph to be cold, distant, chilly then go the opposite

and set the white balance to a lower number than the light you are using. Even Angelina Jolie or Haley

Berry can make you shiver and run for cover. Using white balance creatively is a great way to give your

photographs pizzazz. Using white balance incorrectly is a great way to ruin your photograph. There’s a



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fine line between the two—always consider the emotional aspect when deciding to use white balance

incorrectly.

Some cameras have a limited selection of white balance settings such as: tungsten, fluorescent, flash,

daylight, open shade, shade. Other cameras generally have those same setting for fast referencing but

they also have the ability to set the white balance as a Kelvin temperature number. Being able to set

the number gives you greater control of your white balance. If you have a color temperature meter you

can use those settings or if you just want to tweak the sitting slightly warmer or slightly cooler,

something in between the generally referenced setting, you can do that

The second caveat: if you shoot your photographs in RAW format you can always correct the white

balance in post processing. If you shoot JPG, you can attempt a correction but it is almost impossible to

correct an incorrectly white balanced photograph in the JPG, TIF, PNG formats. Some photographers

shoot in RAW and do not worry about the white balance sitting on the camera. There is no problem

with doing that. Personally, I prefer to see the photograph on the LCD balanced correctly so I prefer to

change white balance as the lighting changes even thought I always shoot RAW.

Why Does Fluorescents Not Have a Kelvin Temperature?In order to have a Kelvin temperature there must be something that is being heated. You have seen

the filament in tungsten and halogen bulbs. When the filament is heated it glows which is what creates

the light. I am sure that at some time you have held a piece of metal in a fire and watched it glow red.

If you heat it even hotter it will begin to glow yellow and when it is really hot it will glow blue or even

white. That is the foundation for Kelvin temperatures. I do not know what element or metal is used as

the standard but when this element is heated it goes through that same range, glowing from red to

blue. At certain temperatures it glows red and at higher temperatures it glows blue. The Kelvin

temperature scale corresponds to the color of this standards element at a specific temperature.

Fluorescents cannot be rated in Kelvin temperature because they have no heated element. They

produce light by electrically stimulating a gas causing it to glow and thus producing light. In order to

truly rate light by a Kelvin temperature rating it must have the heated element which fluorescents do

not have. Camera manufactures assign a somewhat close Kelvin temperature to fluorescents for our

convenience.

Fluorescents have one other problem. They do not produce the full spectrum, all of the colors that the

heated element produces. This is why in the days of film you had to add a FLD magenta (purplish red)

filter in front of your lens. Fluorescents are very green and you needed the magenta to offset that

green cast. When you set your digital camera to the Fluorescent setting it automatically adds in the

magenta to compensate for the greenish color.

Using Lights That Has Different Kelvin Temperatures

If you want your photographs to have as true a color as possible, DO NOT mix lights with different

Kelvin temperatures. In other words, do not shoot outdoors using a Tungsten or a Halogen light in

conjunction with the daylight. Or vice versa do not use Tungsten or Halogen lights on your subject and

have a lot of daylight coming through a nearby window. If you do, in the outdoor photographs the



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shadows are going to go exceptionally warm and indoors the shadows are going to pick up the l ight

from the window and go exceptionally blue. In both cases it is going to be the shadow areas that are

going to be most visually affected. When that happens it is impossible to go in and manually correct

the white balance on only the shadow areas and you will have a two toned photograph in spite of

everything.

Outdoors you can use flash to fill the shadows because the Kelvin temperature of flash or strobe is very

close to the Kelvin temperature of daylight. Indoor you can mix Tungsten or Halogen light with flash

only if you use a CTO (Correction Temperature Orange) filter in front of the flash. The CTO filter is very

similar to the 85B filter that film photographers used to correct Tungsten film to Daylight white

balance. CTO filters are available in 20”x24” sheets from companies like Rosco through B&H or

Adorama. They are also often available cut to size from the manufacturer of your flash unit. The CTO

filter on your flash changes the color of the light to approximately the same as Tungsten lighting.

Another caveat: Mixing the Kelvin temperature of your lights can be extremely creative and even more

fun than creatively using the white balance set incorrectly because it can be done more selectively.

Speaking personally, I love mixed light photographs mainly because I do photography for fun and

therefore I am not locked into this arbitrary concept of “true color.” Color is an emotional component

of a photograph and the way you use color adds to or detracts from that emotional content. I loved

shooting photographs of my gray haired wife with the camera set to Tungsten and using mostly

Tungsten lighting but have the light from a large picture window hit her gray hair and turn it blue. That

burst of unexpected color added a liveliness to the photographs that took them beyond being simply

portraits. I also love warm shadows. A warm person is much easier to get close to than a cold person.

The only thing I don’t really love is throwing fluorescent into the mix because it can give a very sickly

greenish yellow to the shadow areas of skin tones and that ain’t pretty. However, suppose you really

want to make someone look unattractive, ill, maybe even evil then hit’em with uncorrected

fluorescent and have a ball.

When true color is important do not mix the colors of your lights. When it is not important go for it and

mix away. Throw in some neon, sodium vapor street lights or put colored plastic or glass over your

flash—have a ball. Understanding white balance can correct the colors in your photograph. It can also

add immeasurably to your creative enjoyment of photography.

a brief explanation of white balance

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