There are a number of ways to set white balance in camera: AWB (Auto White Balance), CWB (Custom White Balance), White Balance by Preset (Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Tungsten, etc), or White Balance by Kelvin.
This article will take a look at some of the most common misconceptions about white balance, as well as taking a look at one of the less commonly used approaches to white balance: White-Balance-by-Kelvin.
Myth #1: In-Camera White Balance doesn’t matter as long as you shoot RAW
Those who shoot in RAW may pay little heed to in-camera white balance based on the commonly held belief that RAW images are infinitely flexible when it comes to white balance adjustments in the digital darkroom.
The fact is that while you can adjust white balance as desired when you shoot in RAW, working with accurate white balance in camera results in more accurate exposures.
Want proof? Take a look at this image. What do you expect to happen when we convert it to black and white and then adjust the white balance? The tonality does, in fact, change:
The lesson? For most accurate exposure, start with an in-camera white balance that most closely approximates your intended color.
Myth #2: Accurate White Balance Always Results in Perfect Color
Sorry, but there’s more to good color than just accurate white balance; good color goes beyond the relative warmth or coolness of an image and can vary significantly from camera to camera.
The good news is that you can standardize your color by calibrating your camera with a Color Checker card and importing the resulting profile into LR or ACR. We have a great tutorial for this over on the Clickin Moms photography forum.
Myth #3: You should always strive to achieve “Correct” White Balance
This is what your camera seeks to achieve in auto white balance; in my experience, the camera does extremely well in daylight situations but not as well in low light situations, with color casts, or in mixed lighting (where it tends to average).
For more consistently accurate white balance, use your camera’s Custom White Balance (CWB) options to ascertain the color of light in a given situation. You can also follow a white balance chart (below) to achieve neutral gray.
When “correct” white balance is set, a naturally white surface or material will, in fact, appear to be white. It can be a very effective approach in situations in which you want clean, airy color.
… But what if you want to embrace the coolness that we associate with night or the warmth of a honey hued sunset?
In such scenarios, setting “correct” white balance completely strips the drama and beauty of the light. Indeed, when we shoot at sunset, very often, it’s the warmth of that “golden hour” that we find so appealing. “Unnatural” color temperatures can also be extremely effective in setting a certain atmosphere or otherwise changing the mood of a photograph.
Always be keeping your own vision in mind and the way that color can come into play and enhance your work. What did the light feel like to you? What is your perception of the color setting?
For example, you might be surprised to learn that although the human eye tends to perceive moonlight as bluish, it is technically a “warmer” light than daylight; as an artistic matter, I always cool down my white balance settings from neutral when shooting at night, as it best approximates how I envisioned the scene (also worth noting is that unless you’re shooting long exposures with a tripod, you’re usually NOT shooting by moonlight alone).
For the science geeks among us, you may be interested to read more about the reason that we perceive night light as blue (the “the Purkinje Shift”) here.
Myth #4: White-Balance-by-Kelvin is only for math and physics nerds
Well, there may be some truth to this. Didn’t anyone tell you that PHOTOGRAPHY is only for math and physics nerds?
Emotion, artistic intuition, and creativity are certainly critical to producing amazing images, but there’s no denying that you have to call upon the left side of your brain when operating your camera!
The good news is that setting white balance by Kelvin is certainly no more complicated than calculating an appropriate aperture to produce your desired depth of field – in fact, I’d argue that it is painfully simple in comparison.
White-Balance-by-Kelvin: A Walk-Through
1. Reference (or memorize) a White Balance chart
All you really need to do is remember a few key lighting scenarios. As you get to know your camera and the light in your house, you may find that you need to tweak these numbers for accuracy, but this is a good jumping off point:
As a point of reference, we can also look to film, which is produced to perform best in certain types of lighting.
Daylight film, for example, approximates 5500K. Tungsten Type B film, on the other hand, is 3200K. Following film’s lead, if you can only handle memorizing three temps, memorize Daylight (5500K), Average Shade (8000K), and Lamplight (2800K), and go from there.
2. Decide whether you want to neutralize or dramatize the color of the light
Once you know the color temperature of various types of light, just remember that by dialing in that color temperature, you are achieving “white” balance for the light. Thus, if you’re shooting at sunset and want to neutralize the warm hues, simply dial in the color temperature of sunset: somewhere around 2500K.
If, on the other hand, you like your skin tones a little warmer or want to showcase the dramatic warmth of the lighting, select a HIGHER Kelvin value (I like to start at around 6500K when emphasizing the warmth of sunset on a clear evening — that’s approximately 4000K warmer than neutral).
On the flipside, if you’d like to present something even cooler than neutral (as I do with most night images), select a LOWER Kelvin value. As a more general matter, the further you move your white balance slider from the color temperature of the existing light, the more dramatic the appearance.
3. Set your color temperature
So you feel confident about your knowledge of the lighting scenario and the way it would match up to the WB chart? Or you’re in a lighting situation with which you are very familiar?
In these situations, odds are that you’re fine simply setting the Kelvin temperature and being on your way.
I have a pretty good handle on the light in my own home at various times of day and can quickly dial in a white balance that I know will yield reliably pleasing skin tones and overall color consistent with my artistic vision; while the steps above should give you some great starting points, getting familiar with the way your camera outputs color and the ideal color temperature for your most frequent lighting scenarios is just a matter of practice and experimentation.
However, even when you begin to become very comfortable with recognizing the appropriate color temperatures in most situations, the following may still throw you for a loop:
- The color and quality of light don’t fit the chart or are otherwise unfamiliar to you (e.g., unusual indoor lighting, mixed lighting, strange weather patterns that give the sky an unusual hue)
- There is reflected color cast by painted walls, grass, clothing, etc
- You know that you want to non-neutral white balance for creative reasons
In such situations, you may not feel comfortable relying on Kelvin alone.
You can certainly set, chimp, and tweak until it looks right to you – but if your camera has Live View, then you have at your disposal a wonderful tool for setting white balance. Simply turn on Live View, then adjust your color temperature and watch your adjustments live on the screen!
The beauty of Kelvin is that you can fine tune your color in-camera to a much greater degree of precision than you can when using white balance presets.
Please note that mixed lighting and uneven color casts are especially tricky, and there’s generally no quick solution for managing localized discrepancies in color.
I recommend getting the best white balance you can in camera, then correct the discrepancies selectively by using your selective adjustment brush in LR or ACR to lightly paint on the opposite color to neutralize the color cast or area of mixed lighting (if needed).
Now get out there and start experimenting — and welcome to a whole new world of color!
Still struggling? Have an ah-ha moment while trying this out? Want to share an image in which you’ve tried these steps out? Bring it on in the comments!
Awesome tutorial, Sarah!
thanks for sharing all this info, sarah!
I heart this place! There is so much great stuff here! This is just the tutorial I needed!
Awesome, Sarah!!!!
Sarah thanks so much for this tutorial………Awesomeness!
Thanks for this!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much for this!
Awesome as ALWAYS!!! Thanks Sarah!
This is very informative. Not something I think enough about really. Thank you very much Sarah.
Amazing! I love how you cleared up the myths. Such a fantastic article 🙂
Sarah, as always, I very much appreciate your nerdiness in relation to photography. I'm excited to try this out!
Great article Sarah!! Thanks for sharing all this info!
Great info..thanks!!
Thanks Sarah! I remember a lot of this from your breakout session, and it was my ah -ha moment with the live view. I've been using it so much now. I LOVE IT! Great info, thanks for sharing it!
You explained this so clearly and so well, Sarah…it all makes so much sense after reading this article! Thank you so much for taking the time to share all the information that you have as well as your wonderful image examples!
Awesome! I really appreciate the breakdown! Thanks!
This is so helpful… thank you!
Oh my goodness. This is so wonderful! I've been struggling with white balance and useing gray cards/expo disks ect and I just have not been getting the results I was hoping for. I shouldn't admit this publically but I never even realized I could wb by kelvin. This is so genious! I totally had my ah ha moment just now. Thank you so much!
Thanks for this Sarah! I've been fooling around just with the junk and toys in my living room and what a difference. I'm going to have to print out a little chart of the base numbers to fool around with this week. I was always intimidated by using the Kelvin method since I'm NOT a number gal at all but this is so simple!!
Awesome tutorial, Sarah!!! Thanks!
Interesting article, Sarah – great educational and creative points. I'm one of those "shoot in Raw and don't worry about in-camera WB" guys.
In the context of shooting JPEG files, I agree that you've got to get more right in-camera, including any creative white balance. But when shooting Raw files (highly recommended), I disagree with messing with in-camera WB because it leads to more fidgeting with the camera instead of taking pictures.
As you point out, even when shooting Raw the in-camera settings do affect the exposure (as well as the appearance of the LCD preview image), so its good to be close. But I find that I'll want to fine-tune color balance and exposure during post-process anyway (where the tools are more accurate and capable), so exposure being off by 1/3 stop in-camera isn't a worry. I find that 90% of the time leaving WB set to Auto gets close enough for this purpose, and the rest of the time (low light, odd lighting colors) a simple Daylight preset fills the need.
Very helpful. Thanks so much for sharing!
This tutorial made my day! Thank you.
Great info. Thanks for sharing it.
Great information. This seems alot easier than custom white balance with grey card. I'm going to give it a try. thanks so much!
I’d love to have a few of these. Camera picks up a neighborhood kid walking around on my lawn… release the drones! 😀 As an automated swarm it would be the greatest thing ever sirs.
I know this is an old post, but if someone happens along here could you please explain what’s being shown by the example? Is the rollover supposed to be good or bad or just that it’s different? I don’t get it.
Thanks.
Meghan
Hi Meghan!
I’m sorry I am over a year late in responding … but yes – the rollover is simply showing how white balance doesn’t just affect the color array, it actually affects the tonality itself (something that is easier to see when we strip the color away and view the image in black and white). The point is that if you really want to nail your exposure, getting the white balance right in camera is an important consideration.
yea i’m pretty sure my camera doesnt even have a “kelvin” option so im SOL 😛
Ah-ha moment/validation!!! I thought I was cheating by doing it in live-view! Yay that I’m not a cheater!!
This was great tutorial. First time to the site and will now be a frequent visitor.
Ken Rockwell, whom I admire greatly, did a white balance article and stated: “Forget about Kelvin temperatures unless you’re an engineer.” Aren’t men just prone to hyperbole!
I knew instinctively that I wanted to use kelvin – thanks to you, I now know how.
You’s da Mom!
Love this…now to play and get better at it! 🙂
thanks a lot, wonderfull information! I like it
How can you achieve this with the Nikon d5100? Thank you
Hi Karen! My understanding is that the Nikon D5100 does not offer the ability to set color temperature by Kelvin. However, you can set white balance manually or check your camera manual to determine the Kelvin approximations for your white balance presets (such as daylight, tungsten, shade, etc) and use those accordingly.
Ok I have been playing with changing the temps on them. I’ll look more into it
An interesting article. I’ve known about Kelvin colour temperature for a long time, but had no idea it could be adjusted in-camera on some DSLRs. (Not on my Nikon, it seems ). My only quibble is that the third photo of the child doesn’t indicate whether it’s 2500°K or 10,000°K, and a mouse rollover doesn’t change it.
Sorry about that! The rollover has been fixed. 🙂 Thanks for letting us know!
third photo of the child doesn’t indicate whether it’s 2500°K or 10,000°K, and a mouse rollover doesn’t change it still.
Wow! Thanks so much! As a newbie, this was really helpful (overwhelming…lol…but helpful). So much to learn:)
Love this tutorial, Kelvin is something I’ve wanted to learn but thought it was too overwhelming. You made it sound very easy and straight forward. It is my go to method now!
Thank you so, so much for writing this article. I wanted to learn this topic and this is very helpful to me.
I’m so glad it was helpful, Iris!
Such helpful information! So, you could potentially be changing your Kelvin a few times during one photoshoot (for ex, a wedding or senior shoot), correct?
Yes, absolutely! Your color temp changes as you move in and out of lighting scenarios (such as sunlight to shade) as well as when the light itself changes (such as cloud cover moving in or sunset approaching). 🙂
This article was very informative. I couldn’t work out how to use Kelvin to get the right WB and you guys are made it so simple. Thanks.
this was great. Super straightforward and helpful.
That photo of the baby on the path was great illustration of the concept too
I’m not sure I understand what you did when addressing Myth #1. Can you help me? My understanding of RAW is that you never “see” RAW. It isn’t applying any viewing format’s code yet. When you look at your RAW photos on the camera or in LightRoom, you’re looking a jpeg rendering of the photo. If you’ve set the camera’s white balance, the “RAW” photo you look at is a rendering that honors those inputs. Isn’t that correct? So, then when you did the B&W conversions, weren’t you converting a RAW photo whose rendering was affecting by your adjustments?
I am a Nikon user, who always selects both RAW and Fine jpeg. I set my camera up to avoid having to do much post-processing. But if I want/need to, I can go back to the larger resolution RAW file to make different adjustments, either based on the in-camera jpeg settings or scrapping them.
I guess in short, I’m still unconvinced it’s a myth.My understanding is still that RAW is only affected by ISO, aperture and shutter settings. You are saying the jpeg or TIFF presets still affect RAW?
Thanks for any further explanation you have to correct my misunderstanding.
Joe