Hi Happy Scrappers!
Well, the weekend is almost here and it’s likely that you may be taking some photos soon. You may notice that under certain circumstances, your photos end up being too “warm’ or “cool” and look nothing like what you’re seeing with your own eyes. Many times, this phenomenon is caused by your camera incorrectly calculating the “white balance” of the environment. Basically, white balance is the “temperature” of an image, commonly caused by the color cast of the light source. I notice that when I shoot a photo in my living room at night, our lights end up making photos look completely yellow. It’s possibly to correct an incorrect white balance in post-processing using programs like Photoshop but there is an easier way to get it right the first time. Enter the white balance tool.
I use a tool call the Expodisc. It’s a super simple little disc that I snap onto the end of my lens and it helps me adjust white balance more correctly. Here’s how it works:
First, keeping my camera on auto white balance, I take a photo of the light source while the Expodisc is attached to my lens. The image looks like this:
Then, I switch my camera to “custom” white balance.
Finally, my camera allows me to set up shortcuts. One of my shortcuts is to set a custom white balance. I choose the gray image I took with the tool, which then becomes my custom white balance.
That’s it! Here are some unedited out-of-camera before and afters…
before:
after:
before:
after:
Obviously, that last photo is better but not perfect yet. I have found that this tool can get my out-of-camera photos a lot closer to the real thing, requiring less time in post processing.
Hope this post helps you perfect your photographs. Happy Friday!
Diane Howard says
With some of these new lights and multiple lighting types in a scene, this could really be an asset. I’m definitely going to investigate it.