- Hey guys, my name is Matt Johnson.
And today I'm gonna be explaining white balance for video
to you as quickly as possible, which is really important
because if your white balance isn't set properly,
your videos may look like this.
This shot is too cool, or this,
this shot is too warm.
See why white balance is important?
And I know some of you are thinking right now,
"Matt, my camera has an auto white balance feature.
I don't need to understand white balance."
Well, hold your horses a second there partner,
because this is not a setting
that you want to leave on auto.
So what is white balance?
Let's take this video, for example,
as long as you aren't colorblind
to your eyes, this shirt I'm wearing is blue.
This background over here is like a dark gray.
And this light over here is orange.
Let's pay attention to this orange light for a second.
You are taking for granted that this light is orange
because it's what your eyes are seeing.
Now, scientists love measuring things,
and there was this physicist with a great beard
named William Kelvin that said that we should have
a scientific way to measure the color
that a light is giving off.
He created something called a color temperature scale,
which is also known as the Kelvin scale.
This color temperature scale measures the color
that any white light is giving off,
from a warm orange to a cool blue
and gives it a specific number
from 1,000 Kelvin all the way up to 10,000 Kelvin.
This light back here is a warm white light
that measures about 2,800 on the Kelvin scale.
Meanwhile, this light that's shining on my face right now
is a cool white light that measures about 5,500 Kelvin.
All white lights fall somewhere on this scale.
Here's where things get crazy though.
Your camera does not know that this light is orange
and it doesn't know that this light is blue.
Your eyes take for granted
that these two lights are this color,
but your camera is incapable of knowing
what color temperature a light is unless you tell it.
And the way that you tell it,
is by using a setting called white balance.
And we're back to the initial question
asked at the start of this video,
what is white balance?
White balance is how you make the color temperature
of a light that your camera sees
match up with the color temperature of a light
that your eyes see.
If your white balance isn't set right,
your colors will look weird and all of your footage
may look too warm or too cool.
Every camera, whether you know it or not
has a white balance feature
and they're all similar.
Let's use this Sony A6400 here as an example,
open the white balance menu.
And the first thing you'll see
is it has an auto white balance option
where the camera can guess the color temperature
of the light you're filming.
This works decently.
But once you're filming with multiple lights
that have different colors, your camera's
auto white balance feature can get confused fast,
and it may even change your white balance while recording,
which can make color grading your footage a nightmare.
Also, if you are say, filming a scene with two cameras
set to auto white balance, you have no guarantee
their white balance settings will match up,
which is incredibly difficult to fix.
Now there are other pre-sets,
but let's skip those for a minute
and scroll down to this K icon that says,
C temp/filter.
What does K mean Matt?
Our good friend, William Kelvin, of course,
and C temp stands for color temperature.
And look, you can manually set your color temperature
anywhere between 2,500 and 9,900 Kelvin on this camera.
Okay, great, Matt.
But how do I know what color temperature
light is whenever I'm filming?
Here's an easy way to remember Kelvin color temperatures.
Think of a campfire.
Yes, a campfire with burning sticks and logs.
When a fire's coals have been burning for a while,
they're usually a warm or reddish orange.
On the other hand, when a fire is burning very hot
its flames burn cool blue,
with the hottest parts being so blue,
they're almost completely white.
In the same way at the bottom of your color temperature
scale at 1,000 to 3,000 Kelvin, your light colors
are gonna be really warm and reddish.
Alternatively, the upper end of the color scale,
6,000 to 10,000 Kelvin is gonna be more cool blue.
If you ever get confused about color temperature,
a campfire always helps me.
Now there's one last thing that you need to know,
certain types of light match up
with certain color temperatures.
And if you could memorize four of these color temperatures,
you should be able to set your white balance correctly
basically every time.
In general, an incandescent light
AKA a normal white light bulb with a warm light
is going to be around 3,200 Kelvin.
Set your camera white balance to that
if you're filming in a room with warm incandescent lighting.
Second, you have fluorescent lighting.
These are typically the long, tube-shaped lights
that you see in office buildings, et cetera.
And they usually run around 3,800 Kelvin
in color temperature.
Third, you have daylight color temperature.
If sunlight is your main source of light,
it's usually 5,500 Kelvin.
Lastly, you have cloudy weather at 6,500 Kelvin.
If you're using sunlight obscured by clouds,
that should work well for you.
Now here's something really cool.
The four color temperatures I listed
were incandescent light, fluorescent light,
sunlight and cloudy light.
Let's go back here to the Sony A6400 white balance menu.
These camera pre-sets roughly match up
with 3200, 3800, 5500 and 6500 Kelvin.
And most cameras have them.
So it's up to you what you want to use.
If you are just getting started in filmmaking,
I would completely avoid your camera's
auto white balance feature,
and instead use those four pre-sets.
But, once you start feeling more confident,
start dialing in your Kelvin color temperature manually.
It's only going to help you.
Soon, the colors that your camera sees
will match up with what your eyes see.
With that, thank you so much for watching.
How do you white balance?
Do you use auto still?
Are you dialing in your Kelvin manually?
Let me know down in the comments below,
it would also be a huge help to me
if you would consider liking this video and subscribing,
if you wanna see more educational filmmaking videos
like this in the future.
Also, if you happen to be a wedding filmmaker like me,
you probably want to book more couples
and film more weddings.
To help you out with that, I've created a free PDF guide
that's gonna walk you through some practical steps
that you can take right now in your business
to start booking more couples.
It's a free gift to you
and you can get it down at a link in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.