Yellow White Balance

[Chet Kenisell]

Something I have never understood:

If I have a scene that I want to look yellowish (for instance, the clockmaker set), when I use a white card to do the white balance, the scene "neutrals out" the yellow light and makes the yellows white (and everyting else blue). But what if I WANTED the yellowish look? So how would I white balance once the lighting is set up?

I understand the purpose of white balancing. But if you white balance everything, you'll never get an accurate color if the general lighting is yellow. You'd actually be offsetting the true color in the room.

Is the general idea to go ahead and white balance (to get the reference for white) and then color grade/correct in post?

[Kevin Wild]

I would definitely do this in post, but that's just me. This way, you can control how much color you want to add in to the scene.

But yes, to answer your question, you would normally white balance first and then gel your lights yellowish if you want to do it in-camera.

Kevin

[Andrew Todd]

if the ligting is yellow and you WANT the yellow look.. white balance when the lighting is normal. then turn on the yellow lights. if you want a natural with no yelllow white balance with the yellow lights on.

[Pete Tomov]

Or with the H1 you can dial in the white balance you want.

[Vincent Rozenberg]

I'll go for Pete's suggestion. Calibrate you're viewfinder good, so colours will be as they are and just dial the white balance.

[Chet Kenisell]

Great suggestions.

Thanks everybody.

[Chris Hurd]

Another option is to dial it in via the Custom Presets. You can adjust white balance at the CCD level using the Master Red, Green and Blue sliders. Drastic -- but guaranteed to work.

[Lauri Kettunen]

Originally Posted by Chet Kenisell

If I have a scene that I want to look yellowish (for instance, the clockmaker set),

With the Xl H1 this is rather easy using the manual setting of the white balance. The higher color temperature you set, the more yellows are added to compensate the blues.

Another approach is to print a "blueish white card". That is, print small blue dots on a white paper, and then use this as your white card. What happens is that the camera will add yellows to cancel out the effect of the blueish white card, and thus, everything will appear yellowish. The larger the dots and the higher their density, the more yellowish is the image.

Your problem is rather common in wildlife shooting in the North. On bright winter days the cold sky blue is reflected from the snow fields, whereas everything in direct sun light is warm yellow. If the white balance is taken from the snow fields in shadow, the snow will appear white and the direct sun light too yellow. The other way around, direct light will become neutral white and shadows too blueish.