Bro look I'll keep it simple. You my man have been gifted with the ability to explain, most people can demonstrate but you are naturally inclined to explain. And the best part is that you explain things simply! Most people like cramming their videos with verbose terminology that racks the viewers brains and leaves them with more questions than answers. But I always think to myself that the best teacher is the one who can explain in the most simple way possible. Why? Because that way he can teach ANYONE.
Former print reporter here. I remember going to sometimes remote crime scenes in AZ in the early 2000s, and if there were solo video journalists at the scene (ie, without a crew) I remember them frequently asking me to hold a blank, white page of my reporter's notebook on camera to check white balance before shooting. I vaguely understood then but now I get it even more thanks to this vid. :)
Mark, probably the first time I have been vaguely close to understanding white balance. I have updated my Notifications to ALL videos. I also appreciated your warm and professional relationship with Teresa. She totally supported you in what you were trying to explain. What a great team you two make. I'm all for a Mark & Teresa Understanding Camera Settings series
Hi Mark , greetings from the UK … I’ve been an educator for 40 years and this is the best explanation of WB I’ve seen . Many thanks . Very clear , well paced and informative . 🙏
Probably the BEST explanation of white balance I have seen. You are the ONLY one address the difference between "psychological" warm and cool vs "actual kelvin temperature" hot and cold. (warm psychological orange and yellow is actually COLDER on the kelvin temperature scale). GREAT JOB! Also great job explaining why adjustments towards a colder kelvin temperature turns the image blue rather than orange. You need "more blue" to compensate for the orange already in the source light. If the orange really isn't there then the image will have too much blue with that adjustment. I'm often told that I can explain things well but your explanation of this is even better!!
Thank you! I've just gotten used to it being "backwards" just like you get used to using a rudder or outboard motor being "backwards" from a steering wheel. Temperature slider makes so much more sense now!
Well for a long time I could never grasp how to use White Balance,, that is until now!. Your teaching is right on point and I can say now that I actually have got the concept and feel with confidence I can apply this to my Photography. Thank you.
By far, this is the best explanation I have seen about the WB, not only because of its accuracy but also because it is done in a technical and irrefutable way..... thanks, excellent work.
In shooting film, you have limited film choices for color balance. To obtain the proper color temp, you would use a color temp meter and apply color balancing filters on the lens for proper balance.
! Hello my dear friend! I've just met the correct explanation of the color temperature... Thank you very much. It is very accessible and with examples. I especially liked your schedule. I will definitely take up "arms"! It is very convenient, if you train a little, you can set it yourself manually, without any devices, without a white balance filter and without a gray map... ;) Thank you very much. .
I usually shoot in my studio or outdoors, white balance is always easy to set, maybe a minor adjustment in post for better skin tones. But, i was hired to do a "sweet 16" birthday photoshoot, event style in someones house. Which as everyone knows usually is not an easy task to make great photography. When i got there my plan was to shoot with my flash pointed up at the ceiling. Very dim ambient light and the worst part was that their walls were painted yellow. It was a family from Ethiopia with beautiful dark skin, all of their friends and family of probably 50 people at the house were same nationality. So i set my white balance and shot naturally. Of course as you may have guessed, the yellow walls made the skin tones have a very orange color cast. I had no choice but to adjust color balance in post to make the walls of the house interior totally white. That fixed the color cast on the skin pretty much with one click adjustment. And made their house look much prettier. It was an interesting experience in post. There was no way for me to be able to avoid color cast, unless they had very good and bright ambient lighting. Which of course usually we don't in our homes. All in all they loved the images and for some reason never asked why their walls are white in the photos.
I can get in my car and drive from point A to point B no problem. I don't know how it works mechanically and don't need to know. Similarly, I would like to know how to adjust my camera's white balance with instructions that don't get down to the atomic level of color and light. This is a great video though with lots of detail.
Oh God I’ve been waiting for this video , from a long time . I just miss at white balance every time 😕 . There are many videos but i only understand what adorama teaches 😁📸
Extremely informative. I have a better understanding of how each work on each setting. I have always kept it on Auto White as it was always best from what I've studied and viewed by others. I have had issues with night suits with low lighting lighted with Iridescent lighting.
Great video!! Thank you so much!! To be honest I was struggling with White balance a lot because most AWB feature in budget cameras are not very reliable I've tried this custom WB with normal white paper and it works I'm really grateful
Great explanation. Good starting point in Lightroom. I do something I call middle of the road shooting. I will sit in the raised front seat of a tour bus and spot a well lighted scene coming off in the distance. I normally will shoot at around 55mm to miss the bus interior. Generally set my ISO at around 400 to stop movement. Watch till the main point of interest and snap at the best time. You get some unusual points of view not often seen from that position. The narrow winding roads of Italy and small town activities can be unique. To get to your point about white balance I used to compensate in Lightroom during enhancement for the tinted blue glass by nudging the Red slider over with amazing effect. Now if I click on auto white balance first it’s a better starting point that will allow me to adjust the red slider to personal taste without effecting color balance as much.Thanks for sharing that Tip.
White balance is very simple and you need to start explaining it in this way. Firstly, your eye automatically adjusts for light intensity. This happens by the action of your pupils opening and closing, it happens automatically. Ok, well ... your brain does the SAME EXACT THING (inside your mind) when processing color that you perceive. In other words, your brain is automatically adjusting for white balance all the time. This is part of your biology and your mind, just like your pupils opening and closing. Ok, so you can be in an environment where the light has a strong color, and when you look at a white piece of paper you will see white, i.e. you will 'experience" white, because your brain interpreted it to be white. In fact, it may be green, red, blue, whatever. But your brain is set to Auto-WhiteBalance (you cannot turn it off). So, what you THINK you are seeing does actually appear white, when in fact it is an ILLUSION. That is what your BRAIN is doing, but a camera is not a brain, it's an dumb instrument, and it can see what is really genuinely there. So when you see a picture and the colors look wacky, your eyes may have been tricked to think that the light appeared to be ok ... but the camera will see the actual light as it really is. This difference proves that your mind is making this auto-adjustment. Ok ... now that you know WHY this thing exists, you can follow this guy's advice on how to adjust the cam to set white bal properly. You're welcome. By the way, the brain does this kind of weird auto-adjust for all 5 senses. Hope that helps.
Precisely, and when I started watching, I thought "sigh - I bet he won't explain fully how our vision auto adjusts". Thanks for the excellent explanation. Btw, I had an amazing "white balance" experience - there was a red dust storm, so naturally, my eyes adjusted appropriately. When I got into my car, the normally white dash readouts appeared significantly blue! My initial reaction was WTF?!?, but I quickly realised what was going on. 🤣
A good teacher, illustrating so nicely in a easy understable way , fantastic, Thank you so much for this way of presentation. so clear, really enjoyed with this technique of teaching, very nice. encouraged to subscribe.
great explanatory video. what bothers me is that the higher kelvin temperature is referenced as "hotter" and "warmer". I have never heard this before - on the contrary: the higher the kelvin, the colder and bluer. Which is also reflected in the result, isn't it?
2 quick points... need to be clarified... clear blue sky without warm colored sunlight, is actually a very cool light up around 8000K. The sun mixed with clear blue sky is approx 5500K, when the warm light and cool light are mixed together. Clouds also do this mixing, so when it is overcast, the light color coming from the clouds is around 5500K too.
Great video Mark Wallace its good to see how to go about correcting White Balance! Doing it in Post its always Plan B but if one can get it right from scratch its better. I am having an issue with a Canon Point & Shoot Camera, using the Pop Up Flash alone or to trigger a Speedlight and even selecting Daylight WB still gives me a warmer over all tone. I tried selecting Custom WB but then I get a slight Cyanosh tone but closer to neutral. Thanks ADORAMA for having someone of the level of Mark Wallace on your channel!
Thank you! I have four Canon 250D cameras that I use to shoot live music videos. There's no custom WB in Kelvins. Only as you showed in this video, using the custom picture. Please advise how to set the correct WB for all cameras to match their pictures
Except the loose introduction to Kelvin theory others were fun to listen to 😊. A little bit of lesser unnecessary explanation would be very great. Overall it was great. Thanks a lot.
Clean explanation, thanks for sharing this! I wonder, in the case of a post-processing balance, if I were to shoot a set of photos, and lastly have a shot to a balance card, so that I can copy settings from that edit to previous shots, maybe that requires that all shots are not done with automatic camera correction, but any fixed balance setting?
This is great information, but I would have liked to see a small bit about the difference between a white balance card and an exposure card. I can't tell you how many times I see people get the two confused, asking how bright a white balance card should be for exposure and how to white balance using an exposure card. ?!?!?!?! They're not the same thing. Also, technically, the white balance card isn't white, it's neutral, in that it equally reflects all light that hits it and doesn't impart a color cast itself. The more light it reflects, the brighter (or more white) it appears to be, but in reality, it could also only reflect 18% of all the light that hit it and appear to be grey, and at that magical number, you can also use the same card as an exposure card, though few manufacturers make exposure cards that are actually neutral enough to be used as a white balance card.
I am used to this problem . A black and white movie on blue ray , a movie like Frankenstein junior for example , require a white setting to avoid artefacts
I often think of color temperature in terms of absolute zero, and the relative temperatures of celestial objects (that's what °Kelvin refers to, after all): blue stars are hotter than red stars, therefore their respective emitted light is described in those hot/cool terms. If you want an easy-reference guide, look at a pack of LED light bulbs - there is often a graphic of where they fall on the kelvin scale, along with a description like "warm" (soft white is about 2700K, but I prefer something in the daylight/5000K range for lighting my home).
Great vid! While watching this, when you said wall was white my screen was grey. I tried reading up and adjusting for it/ did a calibration, but could never get it to show white.... is this a problem or how it should be? MacBook Air.
Hi Mark . Thank you for all your efforts and shared knowledge. I have a question: this white card and the gray card, are they used for the exact same thing?
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
Mark is probably THE most understandable online tutor i have seen in a long time. Always great to see Mark!
Bro look I'll keep it simple.
You my man have been gifted with the ability to explain, most people can demonstrate but you are naturally inclined to explain. And the best part is that you explain things simply!
Most people like cramming their videos with verbose terminology that racks the viewers brains and leaves them with more questions than answers. But I always think to myself that the best teacher is the one who can explain in the most simple way possible. Why? Because that way he can teach ANYONE.
So far this is the simplest and must comprehendible video I've seen about white balance
Former print reporter here. I remember going to sometimes remote crime scenes in AZ in the early 2000s, and if there were solo video journalists at the scene (ie, without a crew) I remember them frequently asking me to hold a blank, white page of my reporter's notebook on camera to check white balance before shooting. I vaguely understood then but now I get it even more thanks to this vid. :)
By far the best explanation of white balance I've seen yet! Thank you!
Thank you very much Sir 📸🍔🍕🥤☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
Agreed
Mark, probably the first time I have been vaguely close to understanding white balance. I have updated my Notifications to ALL videos. I also appreciated your warm and professional relationship with Teresa. She totally supported you in what you were trying to explain. What a great team you two make. I'm all for a Mark & Teresa Understanding Camera Settings series
we can therefore prove, that shadows are hotter than direct sunlight.
all jokes aside, mark, your tutorials are always wonderful and to the point.
Hi Mark , greetings from the UK … I’ve been an educator for 40 years and this is the best explanation of WB I’ve seen . Many thanks . Very clear , well paced and informative . 🙏
Peace be with you. Thanks for the video.
Probably the BEST explanation of white balance I have seen. You are the ONLY one address the difference between "psychological" warm and cool vs "actual kelvin temperature" hot and cold. (warm psychological orange and yellow is actually COLDER on the kelvin temperature scale). GREAT JOB! Also great job explaining why adjustments towards a colder kelvin temperature turns the image blue rather than orange. You need "more blue" to compensate for the orange already in the source light. If the orange really isn't there then the image will have too much blue with that adjustment. I'm often told that I can explain things well but your explanation of this is even better!!
Thank you for explaining white balance in a language that I understand.
Thank you! I've just gotten used to it being "backwards" just like you get used to using a rudder or outboard motor being "backwards" from a steering wheel. Temperature slider makes so much more sense now!
Well for a long time I could never grasp how to use White Balance,, that is until now!. Your teaching is right on point and I can say now that I actually have got the concept and feel with confidence I can apply this to my Photography. Thank you.
By far, this is the best explanation I have seen about the WB, not only because of its accuracy but also because it is done in a technical and irrefutable way..... thanks, excellent work.
In shooting film, you have limited film choices for color balance. To obtain the proper color temp, you would use a color temp meter and apply color balancing filters on the lens for proper balance.
!
Hello my dear friend!
I've just met the correct explanation of the color temperature... Thank you very much. It is very accessible and with examples. I especially liked your schedule.
I will definitely take up "arms"! It is very convenient, if you train a little, you can set it yourself manually, without any devices, without a white balance filter and without a gray map...
;)
Thank you very much.
.
I changed the settings on my camera from WB to PRE and my photos are so much better and natural with the colors
I usually shoot in my studio or outdoors, white balance is always easy to set, maybe a minor adjustment in post for better skin tones. But, i was hired to do a "sweet 16" birthday photoshoot, event style in someones house. Which as everyone knows usually is not an easy task to make great photography. When i got there my plan was to shoot with my flash pointed up at the ceiling. Very dim ambient light and the worst part was that their walls were painted yellow. It was a family from Ethiopia with beautiful dark skin, all of their friends and family of probably 50 people at the house were same nationality. So i set my white balance and shot naturally. Of course as you may have guessed, the yellow walls made the skin tones have a very orange color cast. I had no choice but to adjust color balance in post to make the walls of the house interior totally white. That fixed the color cast on the skin pretty much with one click adjustment. And made their house look much prettier. It was an interesting experience in post. There was no way for me to be able to avoid color cast, unless they had very good and bright ambient lighting. Which of course usually we don't in our homes. All in all they loved the images and for some reason never asked why their walls are white in the photos.
APPRECIATE THIS VIDEO...great tips for COLOR BALANCE!
That’s why I still shooting film on 2024 , and I can control my light temp , thank you for sharing , great job!
I can get in my car and drive from point A to point B no problem. I don't know how it works mechanically and don't need to know. Similarly, I would like to know how to adjust my camera's white balance with instructions that don't get down to the atomic level of color and light. This is a great video though with lots of detail.
Mark your a great teacher. Thanks so much for sharing.
Oh God I’ve been waiting for this video , from a long time . I just miss at white balance every time 😕 . There are many videos but i only understand what adorama teaches 😁📸
Me too Ms 🥰 I'm waiting for this video, because I need to learn about white balance
Me too
Extremely informative. I have a better understanding of how each work on each setting.
I have always kept it on Auto White as it was always best from what I've studied and viewed by others.
I have had issues with night suits with low lighting lighted with Iridescent lighting.
Great video!!
Thank you so much!!
To be honest I was struggling with White balance a lot
because most AWB feature in budget cameras are not very reliable
I've tried this custom WB with normal white paper and it works
I'm really grateful
Great explanation.
Good starting point in Lightroom. I do something I call middle of the road shooting. I will sit in the raised front seat of a tour bus and spot a well lighted scene coming off in the distance. I normally will shoot at around 55mm to miss the bus interior. Generally set my ISO at around 400 to stop movement. Watch till the main point of interest and snap at the best time. You get some unusual points of view not often seen from that position. The narrow winding roads of Italy and small town activities can be unique. To get to your point about white balance I used to compensate in Lightroom during enhancement for the tinted blue glass by nudging the Red slider over with amazing effect. Now if I click on auto white balance first it’s a better starting point that will allow me to adjust the red slider to personal taste without effecting color balance as much.Thanks for sharing that Tip.
Yes, seen a lot of videos explaining white balance. None as clear as this one. 👍🏻👍🏻
Excellent lecture on white balance. Fully understood,.
Thanks so much for this!! Really, really helpful! Question: is it better to use a white card or 18% grey card for white balance?
White balance is very simple and you need to start explaining it in this way. Firstly, your eye automatically adjusts for light intensity. This happens by the action of your pupils opening and closing, it happens automatically. Ok, well ... your brain does the SAME EXACT THING (inside your mind) when processing color that you perceive. In other words, your brain is automatically adjusting for white balance all the time. This is part of your biology and your mind, just like your pupils opening and closing. Ok, so you can be in an environment where the light has a strong color, and when you look at a white piece of paper you will see white, i.e. you will 'experience" white, because your brain interpreted it to be white. In fact, it may be green, red, blue, whatever. But your brain is set to Auto-WhiteBalance (you cannot turn it off). So, what you THINK you are seeing does actually appear white, when in fact it is an ILLUSION. That is what your BRAIN is doing, but a camera is not a brain, it's an dumb instrument, and it can see what is really genuinely there. So when you see a picture and the colors look wacky, your eyes may have been tricked to think that the light appeared to be ok ... but the camera will see the actual light as it really is. This difference proves that your mind is making this auto-adjustment. Ok ... now that you know WHY this thing exists, you can follow this guy's advice on how to adjust the cam to set white bal properly. You're welcome. By the way, the brain does this kind of weird auto-adjust for all 5 senses. Hope that helps.
Wow good explanation 👏 👍
😮❤😊 👍
Thanks this helped more then the video
Precisely, and when I started watching, I thought "sigh - I bet he won't explain fully how our vision auto adjusts". Thanks for the excellent explanation.
Btw, I had an amazing "white balance" experience - there was a red dust storm, so naturally, my eyes adjusted appropriately. When I got into my car, the normally white dash readouts appeared significantly blue! My initial reaction was WTF?!?, but I quickly realised what was going on. 🤣
What if someone is colorblind? How might affect their ability to adjust for white balance?
Great information 👍
I enjoyed your white balance settings. I learned more. Thank you!!
The best explanation with example I've ever seen
Thanks for this video, it really helps me a lot figuring out how to set th white balance. Superb tutorial!
A good teacher, illustrating so nicely in a easy understable way , fantastic, Thank you so much for this way of presentation. so clear, really enjoyed with this technique of teaching, very nice. encouraged to subscribe.
great explanatory video. what bothers me is that the higher kelvin temperature is referenced as "hotter" and "warmer". I have never heard this before - on the contrary: the higher the kelvin, the colder and bluer. Which is also reflected in the result, isn't it?
Good explanation of white balance and yes, Teresa is a very good model.
Mark is always dropping some gems! 💎
Wow!!! What an explanation. Thank You
2 quick points... need to be clarified... clear blue sky without warm colored sunlight, is actually a very cool light up around 8000K. The sun mixed with clear blue sky is approx 5500K, when the warm light and cool light are mixed together. Clouds also do this mixing, so when it is overcast, the light color coming from the clouds is around 5500K too.
Thank you so much sir for your packaged information.
You're great tea, Sir. And Teresa has great smile.
awesome and simple to understand. thanks so much!
On my Fuji I simply use the Auto White Balance Lock, set to one specific button. One push at the button and it's done.
I know this isn't related to the video, but great studio space you've got there!
My God, this is a great video that I'm looking for long time ago.
Many thanks for your time to post this video.
👍
thanks Mark and Teresa.
This was an excellent explanation, thank you Mark.
Informative, super helpful, and clearly presented. Thanks Mark!
This was great. Thank you so much for this!
Brilliant ❤ Awesome video ❤ Super informative ❤
elegant and clear!!
Excellent Mark 🙏👌👌👌
Great video Mark Wallace its good to see how to go about correcting White Balance! Doing it in Post its always Plan B but if one can get it right from scratch its better. I am having an issue with a Canon Point & Shoot Camera, using the Pop Up Flash alone or to trigger a Speedlight and even selecting Daylight WB still gives me a warmer over all tone. I tried selecting Custom WB but then I get a slight Cyanosh tone but closer to neutral. Thanks ADORAMA for having someone of the level of Mark Wallace on your channel!
Fantastic video!
You have a new subscriber. Thank you so much for this video! I’ve been dying for someone to explain the technical bit for me. Keep it up.
PHENOM video. thank you. been wrestling with this topic and you did a GREAT job teaching.
Very well explained👌 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ with Love from Bharat🇮🇳🙏😊 Thank you Sir
This channel is great! Subscribed.
Thank you!
I have four Canon 250D cameras that I use to shoot live music videos. There's no custom WB in Kelvins. Only as you showed in this video, using the custom picture. Please advise how to set the correct WB for all cameras to match their pictures
Thanks for doing such a great video about white balance.super helpful for me ...
Thank you so much for this video. It was very helpful! 👍
Didn’t even remember I can set a custom, thanx Mike
Such a big help for me..thanks for doing such a great video about white balance..
What a fantastic video many thanks for your educational videos.
Except the loose introduction to Kelvin theory others were fun to listen to 😊. A little bit of lesser unnecessary explanation would be very great. Overall it was great. Thanks a lot.
Best video on the topic I have seen. Thank you so much!!
Excellent video.
a fantastic demonstration
Very informative, Mark! Thank you! Teresa is a terrific model!
Thanks Mark for such an informative video.Question Can A custom white balance be used say in sunset/Landscape photography
Brilliant! Thank you!!
Thank you, just what I was looking for. Very helpful
Very good. I learn and enjoy you videos. They work. Thank you.
Clean explanation, thanks for sharing this! I wonder, in the case of a post-processing balance, if I were to shoot a set of photos, and lastly have a shot to a balance card, so that I can copy settings from that edit to previous shots, maybe that requires that all shots are not done with automatic camera correction, but any fixed balance setting?
Excellent job
Great video!!
Powerful video!
Very useful, thank you
but the background is GRAY!!
So as a beginner photographer. Is this or should this be the first thing you do when you turn on your camera?
Thank you continuing with learning
Great video! Super clear explanation. Thank u!
I’ll watch anything Mark puts out. He does an excellent job of explaining things. Check out his video on the Inverse Square Law. Best on the Internet.
Well done.
Very nice explanation
Thanks Mark. Great explanation
This is great information, but I would have liked to see a small bit about the difference between a white balance card and an exposure card. I can't tell you how many times I see people get the two confused, asking how bright a white balance card should be for exposure and how to white balance using an exposure card. ?!?!?!?! They're not the same thing. Also, technically, the white balance card isn't white, it's neutral, in that it equally reflects all light that hits it and doesn't impart a color cast itself. The more light it reflects, the brighter (or more white) it appears to be, but in reality, it could also only reflect 18% of all the light that hit it and appear to be grey, and at that magical number, you can also use the same card as an exposure card, though few manufacturers make exposure cards that are actually neutral enough to be used as a white balance card.
I am used to this problem . A black and white movie on blue ray , a movie like Frankenstein junior for example , require a white setting to avoid artefacts
Good job
More of these Mark videos needed👌
I often think of color temperature in terms of absolute zero, and the relative temperatures of celestial objects (that's what °Kelvin refers to, after all): blue stars are hotter than red stars, therefore their respective emitted light is described in those hot/cool terms. If you want an easy-reference guide, look at a pack of LED light bulbs - there is often a graphic of where they fall on the kelvin scale, along with a description like "warm" (soft white is about 2700K, but I prefer something in the daylight/5000K range for lighting my home).
This video is so mindblowing to me. Good explanation :)
Great vid! While watching this, when you said wall was white my screen was grey. I tried reading up and adjusting for it/ did a calibration, but could never get it to show white.... is this a problem or how it should be? MacBook Air.
Hi Mark . Thank you for all your efforts and shared knowledge. I have a question: this white card and the gray card, are they used for the exact same thing?
Props to Teresa for the modelling. 👍
Excellent 👍
Excellent explanation Mark as always very informative
Wowwwww!
Thank you Mark!
i totally understand now omg thank you
Nice. Why some ppl hold Grey card?
🤩Thank you so much. Such a valuable lesson