 Hello, welcome to this lecture on White Balance and Color Temperature for Art 234, Color Photography 1. So color temperature describes the light appearance of different light sources. Each light source offers a different color of light based on the Kelvin scale. So here we have an interior room and as you can see, the tones of light are very different. So we've got sort of like a greenish-blueish fluorescent light and something that's actually a little bit more white or magenta. Again, these could be adjusted based on the camera, but you may have noticed light has different appearances based on its source, whether it is electronic, natural, etc. So here we have sort of an image here from Wikipedia, which kind of outlines the scale of different lights. So remember, light temperature is measured in units of Kelvin. The lower the number is sort of not as powerful light. So we have match flame and then the higher the number it is, the brighter it is. And it also changes the tone of light. So some are more orange and yellow and some are more blue as well. So it can kind of change within that scale. Remember, when the color light shifts, we don't see it too well with our visible eye because our brain will compensate for it. However, the camera doesn't have a brain, so we need to help the camera. The camera needs some help. So this is what white balance is about. It's sort of correcting color cast. So your camera will adjust color based on the white balance settings that you choose. Here's a sample of what cameras may have. They may have more or less, but they have auto incandescent, fluorescent, direct sunlight, flash, cloudy and shade. Again, this is only a little bit of what possibilities of light could be. But your camera will sort of make adjustments on it. And it's funny with film used to, for color film, you would either buy daylight film, daylight rated, or you would buy incandescent film. Incandescent film is not as popular. I don't think anyone really makes it except for anything with tea on it, which could stand for tungsten or incandescent. There's a few popular films that use it. We'll talk about film photography a little bit later. But you used to actually have to get a filter on your camera to correct for indoor light if you're using daylight film. So this is an example of one scene with different white balance settings. It also shows the color temperature. This is actually going to be a little bit what you're doing for your white balance exercise. Taking a picture of a scene and adjusting just the white balance settings. But you can see there's a different color cast with everything. It really changes how the image looks. You may have taken pictures on your camera without adjusting the white balance setting and it may have turned out really wonky. Or images turn out really yellow because they're indoors. So it's always good to adjust your white balance in camera to have a correctly colored photograph. This is another example with tungsten bulbs. You can see the color shift at daylight rated color correction, which is the camera actually adding color to the scene to correct how the camera is recording the media. You can see it's really yellow and just kind of gross looking. And the auto white balance is okay, but the tungsten seems a little bit more accurate. Personally, I would kind of balance somewhere between the auto white balance and the tungsten to have more of an accurate color balance. Remember setting your camera is the first step because we want to make sure we can get everything correct in camera. You can create a custom white balance, which is actually preferred. And you'll be doing this for your white balance exercise. So the custom white balance icon is it always looks like a little flower to me. I don't know how to describe it. It's good to see it circled right here, but it always makes me think of a little flower. Typically, you can use a white sheet of paper. Take a picture of it, set it to your custom white balance, and then your camera says, well, this is what white is. So I'm going to adjust all my color shifts based on this being white. Now some photographers will use a gray card. I have something like this. It's a gray white and black card on sort of a lanyard that I use for white balance. You can use a gray card for a true neutral. Some people say the gray will give you a better neutral than white, which will sort of absorb colors around it. There's a video that I will like you to watch for more information, but you can use either or just be consistent with whatever you're using so that you can find whatever looks best and most neutral to you. And you can use that as a guide to set for your white balance. Keep that in mind. If you can't find anything, if you don't have everything, a white sheet of paper works, but I prefer these little cards to carry around, put it in my camera bag. They're great. Now, you want to think about white balance when you come into situations with mixed light. And this will happen. It's really hard to color correct, since you have two different light sources. One is sort of a warm light, and maybe one may be like a cool light. And so it's really hard to balance. And this is where you're going to have to make a choice to see which one would give you the best balance. I have this scene that I shot. This was very difficult because I had incandescent light. I had sunlight coming through the windows of the doors. I had roof lights that were fluorescent. And then there was a skylight, which had a shade look. So I pretty much had four light sources in this room. And it's a very large room. So it was very hard to white balance. You could see some of the children look a little bit more blue or purple. Some of them have more of an accurate color balance. So it was really hard to balance this correctly. I had to look at my neutrals in the scene. I had to look at the skin tones. So this was very difficult to work with. But if I mess it up in camera, you can always fix it in post. So you can adjust white balance in post processing, which you should be aware of. This is what it can look like in light room. So you can have these presets to change what everything's looking like within the balance. You can also adjust with the sliders. Typically you want to get everything accurate in camera first and then make the adjustments in post. So this is an example of something that's been edited in post using the profile. So this over here is as shot. The white balance is not correct. Again, we have different types of lights here because we have these interior lights, exterior. So if you go to auto, it actually is the best out of everything offered. Tungsten took a really blue flash to blue cloudy. So auto white balance actually would be the winner and then I would go into my sliders to adjust it more finely. Again, you can always use the eyedropper to pick a target neutral and set that as your neutral to make corrections. You can also use the gray card in a scene as sort of your first image. Set that as your neutral and set the white balance to your whole batch of photos at the same time. The other important thing to think about when we're thinking about white balance and color temperatures, how we see color. You may have noticed maybe you see pictures differently on your computer and you put them on your Instagram and the colors are awful or Facebook just strips the colors. We want to make sure that we're looking at accurate colors. So color calibration is important. You can set your calibration for your monitor, your laptop, your projector. I do that to my projector to set the color. And there's a couple of different ways. So there are free adjustments either if you're using Windows or Mac to sort of set an accurate color. This will help you sort of get the best color, the most true colors based on what your monitor or laptop will offer. Next is something that's free or free software. So some websites will help you and some programs you can download will also help. And then you can also buy the monitor calibrators which are a little bit more expensive but they kind of take the guesswork out of it for you. It is important to actually set the color calibration often in thinking about your atmosphere of light. So if you're in a room with a really bright light, you know, you want to make sure everything is correct. It remains consistent and you actually calibrate on a monthly basis. There's some extra readings and videos that will help you understand white balance, color correction, color temperature and color calibration better. I hope all this information helps you to succeed as your photography journey for this class.