Custom White Balance (huh?)

Let’s continue our discussion of some basic photography concepts. Since the miniatures hobby is so visual, and since my website is so image heavy, I figure it’s somewhat pertinent.

You’ve all probably seen pictures on various websites and forums, where images have heavy yellow or orange tints. That, my friend, is usually the result of using incorrect white balance value.

What is white balance? Here’s the explanation from Wikipedia:

… color balance (sometimes gray balance, neutral balance, or white balance) refers to the adjustment of the relative amounts of red, green, and blue primary colors in an image such that neutral colors are reproduced correctly.

Let’s think this through. All sources of light have different color temperatures, measured in kelvin. I won’t go into the theoretical explanation of color temperatures, of which I myself only have a tenuous understanding. Suffice it to say that different types of light sources — the sun, a fluorescent light bulb, halogen light, tungsten light, etc. — all give off different color temperature. Our brain can “interpret” the different sources on the fly without us being aware of it and render the colors correctly regardless of the source. So a red ball has the same color whether we look at it in the sun or indoors or under a light bulb. Read the rest of this entry »