Circumstances don‘t always allow to properly white balance the camera on-set. There are many reasons for that like mixed lighting, discrete increments in the camera‘s Kelvin adjustments — like when shooting in Cine EI mode on a Sony camera — color casts from windows or streetlights or even an incompetent cameraperson. Image credit. cinema5D Even when everybody did their job right on-set, it’s often necessary to properly white balance material. It does not matter whether you are just slapping a creative LUT on your footage to create a look or if you carefully color-grade manually — if you don’t start with a correctly white balanced image you are wasting time. For example, if you want to design Powergrades you need to make them in a way so that they are based on a correctly balanced image or you will be getting inconsistent results. When I started using DaVinci Resolve I struggled a bit to get my shots white-balanced quickly. I frantically twisted colorwheels, and rolled Gain, Gamma and Highlight balls, guided by nothing more than a gut-feeling and an occasional glance at the vectorscope. The built-in color temperature/tint parameters do work in some cases — like the first one I show in the tutorial — but sometimes they are just not precise enough and/or introduce color casts in darker or brighter parts of the image. Getting the White Balance right It was frustrating and time-consuming, so I looked for a more methodical approach. In this video, I share two of the techniques I found and most frequently use to take the guesswork out of whiterbalancing. The first one is suited for situations when the image has a uniform color cast like the one that happens when the cameras Kelvin (color temperature) settings are off. The second approach is useful when different tonal areas of the image have different color casts, for example, warm highlights, correct mids, and blue darks. I hope this saves you frantically twisting colorwheels, and rolling Gain, Gamma, and Highlight balls. If you have questions, ideas, suggestions or maybe have a little gem of knowledge to share, please put them in the comments!

Multicolor LED lighting is a real thing nowadays. The CAME-TV RGBDT range of LED lights is no exception here. And these are available either in tube form or as foldable ring light. Portable, stackable, multicolor, controllable via app. That’s the future! This new range of mutlicolor LED lights seems to be very interesting. As successors to the already available daylight balanced or bicolor tube lights, these new CAME-TV RGBDT lights are true multicolor devices. Same goes for the new RGBDT ring light which is also foldable, very neat! CAME-TV RGBDT Multicolor LED lights These new lights come in various shapes and sizes. The tube version will be availabe in either 1, 2, 3 or 4-feet length. The ring light has a diameter of about 30″ (76,5 cm) which is pretty big indeed. In order to transport this light, CAME-TV made it foldable. When folded up it’s basically half the size (and half a circle) which makes it much easier for transportation. The cool thing about these CAME-TV RGBDT lights is their ability to emit any color of the spectrum. They come preloaded with the full spectrum of RGB hues and variable white balance values are also possible, of course. The light is being powered by either AC power or DC power. Your choice of  Sony NP or V-Mount batteries can be used. Furthermore, and that’s really cool, you can stack several tube lights together and control them as a group. Up to 64 individual lights can be grouped together. Once grouped, you control the whole group with the supplied controller box or a smartphone app. But, and that’s even cooler, you also can control each light within a group seperately, again either with the controller box or your smartphone. That’s actually very neat! Just wire them up once and then control everything remotely by phone! The device itself is pretty slim and it comes with a detachable barndoor in case you need it. Otherwise just slide it off and the light becomes even more portable and lightweight. The ring light is basically the same device as the CAME-TV RGBDT tube lights, just with a different form factor. This makes the ring light a very versatile and portable solution for all kinds of colorful (or just white) effects. Pricing and Availability These lights are still prototypes (but working ones, as we could witness at NAB). They will become available around the end of May 2018. Pricing is not yet known, but since CAME-TV is known for very competitive prices, I assume this will not ruin you. We’ll have to wait until official pricing is announced to be certain, though. Link: came-tv.com Are you in the market for some versatile, portable multicolor LED lights? Share your thoughts about these new multicolor lights in the comments below!

Often misunderstood, color temperature is an important concept which can have serious implications for the images which we create. In the picture above, you can see three versions of the same image—each shot with different in-camera white balance (color temperature) settings: Top left: incorrectly balanced at 3200K (tungsten) Top right: correctly balanced at 5600K (daylight) Bottom: final color correction, based on the properly balanced 5600K shot Looking at the example, it quickly becomes apparent just how important color temperature can be. Why is Color Temperature Important? It is vital to understand the ways in which color temperature affects our shots. Not only does it play a part in how white surfaces in our scenes are recorded, but it is also pivotal in the overall balance between every color of every surface in the scene. Usually, we want objects that appear white in reality to also appear white in our recorded images—and when white is balanced correctly, all other colors will be balanced correctly, too. A white surface appears white because your brain tells you that it is white. However, it may actually be reflecting the blue light of an overcast day, or the deep orange of the sun just before it disappears below the horizon. Camera White Balance While our eyes and brain adjust continually to changing light conditions, a camera will not. You have to tell your camera what color light is illuminating your scene, and it needs to be adjusted every time the light changes. This is your “white balance” or “color temperature” setting, and if you are recording any format other than RAW, this setting permanently determines the color balance of your recorded image. It is imperative to get this right as correcting mistakes in post can be tough. RAW If you are recording RAW sensor data, then your in-camera white balance setting only affects the way you are monitoring your image; it will be saved as metadata but will have no effect on the recorded image data. Recording in RAW gives you full control over the color temperature in post. Let’s start with a look at color. The Physics of Color Visible light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, with a frequency (wavelength) that determines its color. The frequency of light in the visible spectrum is between 390nm – 700nm (nanometers—billionths of a meter!). A red painted surface will absorb all wavelengths of light except the color red, red light is reflected, and our eyes detect the light which is registered by our brain as red. A white surface, however, is not selective: it reflects the full spectrum of wavelengths of any light falling on it equally. What is White Light? White light contains an equal mix of wavelengths (colors) of the full visible spectrum. This is why white light can be split by a prism into the different wavelengths it contains—white light is an equal mix of everything. It’s important to understand that every light source we encounter actually does have a color, it emits an uneven mix of wavelengths, and therefore “white” in our scene is determined by the color of light illuminating our scene. Color Temperature According to Wikipedia – The color temperature of a light source is the temperature of an ideal black-body radiator that radiates light of comparable hue to that of the light source. A black-body radiator is any object which fully absorbs all frequencies of light, just as a white body is any object which fully reflects all frequencies of light. Black-body radiation (according to Wikipedia) is the type of electromagnetic radiation (light) emitted by a black body (an opaque and non-reflective body) held at constant, uniform temperature. The radiation has a specific spectrum and intensity that depends only on the temperature of the body. In other words, the hue (color or specific spectrum) of light emitted by a black body radiator is determined by its temperature. The sun or a tungsten incandescent filament lamp are both examples of near perfect black body radiators. The temperature of the black body radiator is measured in degrees Kelvin and therefore, the color (specific spectrum) of light emitted by a black body radiator can be determined by its temperature in degrees Kelvin. This can—and has been—mapped onto a chromaticity diagram, forming a curve called Planckian locus. Real-World Light Sources The below table is from Wikipedia and is a helpful reference for knowing the color of your typical light sources. Temperature Source 1,700 K Match flame, low-pressure sodium lamps (LPS/SOX) 1,850 K Candle flame, sunset/sunrise 2,400 K Standard Incandescent lamps 2,550 K Soft White Incandescent lamps 2,700 K “Soft White” compact fluorescent and LED lamps 3,000 K Warm White Compact fluorescent and LED lamps 3,200 K Studio lamps, photofloods, etc. 3,350 K Studio “CP” light 4,100–4,150 K Moonlight 5,000 K Horizon daylight 5,000 K Tubular fluorescent lamps or cool white/daylight compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) 5,500–6,000 K Vertical daylight, electronic flash 6,200 K Xenon short-arc lamp 6,500 K Daylight, Overcast 6,500–9,500 K LCD or CRT screen 15,000–27,000 K Clear blue poleward sky These temperatures are merely characteristic; considerable variation may be present.   The easiest way to make sure your white balance is correct is simply to be aware of the light sources illuminating your scene. The two common standard color temperatures for film and video lighting are “Tungsten” at 3200K and “Daylight” at 5600K. Knowing those two numbers will go a long way to making sure your image is balanced for your light source within the ability to make finer correction in post. Keeping some other values from the table above in mind will also go a long way, for instance if it’s an overcast day outside, you may want to set your camera closer to 6500K. Planning Ahead Mixed light sources can often cause problems, and unless you are intentionally lighting with mixed sources for creative purposes, it is well worth keeping a single color light source in mind when planning ahead. A location recce goes a long way to determining how an area is lit during the day, at night, and what practical light sources are present. By planning ahead and identifying potentially problematic lighting conditions beforehand, you can make informed decisions about how to tackle lighting different locations and what equipment you will need. By understanding color temperature, you will always be ready to balance your camera even in situations where you have no control over lighting at all. Correctly setting your color temperature in-camera is easy. It’s definitely not something you want to fix in post, so always attempt to get your in-camera color temperature right and avoid the headaches that incorrectly balanced images can cause.