Photographers (both amateur and professional) all cite correct white balance as one of the most difficult things to achieve in their photos. White balance evaluates the image in your viewfinder, picks out the white in your photo and adjust the colors in your photo accordingly. So many things affect the white balance of your photo: the kind of light source, how much light, the environment around you (a.k.a. green grass, blue walls, the red shirt the photographer is wearing). One of the most important things that white balance does for your photo is influences the skin tone of your photo subject.
Now I know that the most accurate way to achieve correct white balance is using a grey card and then setting custom white balance. But let’s be honest here. Who’s got time for that when you’re cooking dinner, chasing down a toddler, or just want to grab your camera and catch the magical little moment happening between your two kiddos?
I’ve taken several photography classes (and they were very good ones!), and the classes all mentioned how great the in-camera white balance settings are. But my kids are Asian and have a warm skin tone, so this is what happens when I use the indoor setting for my Nikon D7000. I clearly just snapped this during an every day moment without setting up something special, but let’s just go with it. ;)
Not gonna work, right?
And then I discovered the Kelvin method. Kelvin is your camera’s white balance setting that allows you to control the light temperature. Using Kelvin settings doesn’t insure that everything will be perfect, but it does help eliminate color casts and with some practice you will learn what settings work for your family and your family environment, as well as the right outdoor setting for your family’s skin tones. I’m going to link to some charts and more detailed descriptions below.
I’ve taken some iPhone pictures to show you how to find the Kelvin setting on my camera. I have a Nikon D7000; check your own camera’s manual to find yours, but maybe this will help you know where to look.
First you’ll need to have your camera on Manual; look for the info button which gives you the screen showing all of your manual settings. Press the wb button (on the left) and scroll until you see the K setting.
Next, choose your menu button and select the camera icon. There are 2 pages of menu items under the camera icon so you’ll need to scroll to the second page.
Choose color temperature
And you can see that I have mine set on 5000 since most of my pictures are indoors these rainy spring days.
So back to that bad picture.When I change my white balance to Kelvin 5000 (which I’ve learned is a great go-to setting for my family indoors), everything looks normal. This is my son’s natural skin color; the gray color on the walls looks correct; the carrots are orange; the green smoothie is green. Because I like warm images and we had really good light on this particular day, I *might* have upped my Kelvin to 5200, but this is perfectly acceptable because I can see all the colors look exactly as they should.
Like I mentioned before, it’s not perfect. But after years and years of trying to master white balance, this has absolutely worked the best for me. I still shoot in RAW so that if I make a mistake, I can do some correcting in Lightroom. It is slightly more work than just putting you camera on Auto White Balance, but alot less work than using the grey card.
You’ll definitely have to do some experimenting with your own family to see what works best for them, but the charts should give you an idea of a starting point. For instance, with my own kids, I use 4750-5000 for indoor photos depending on time of day. Outdoor photos, I default to 5500-5800 if we’ve got great warm sunlight. If it’s a very cloudy day or I’ve put them in deep shade, then I up that to approximately 6200-6500. Because their skin tone is already so warm, I don’t go too much higher or they’ll look orange, but you’ll notice on the charts that even using 9000 is acceptable in shady areas.
The following two articles have alot of detailed information and charts that will explain more comprehensively the whole idea of using Kelvin for setting white balance in your camera.
MaryM says
GREAT way of passing on some techie info. I need to figure out how to get better pictures w/my cell phone, which I have been using more and more recently.
Wana says
I’ve never heard of this. Thanks so much for sharing.