Today's video was primarily intended to provide proof
to a white balance misconception that I encountered
on Reddit, but I figured, hey, while I'm at it,
I might as well make a video about it for you guys as well.
And I'm also gonna use this as an opportunity to address
a somewhat-frequently asked question I get regarding
why I wear this grey shoelace around my wrist.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music] ♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
[cryptic techno music]
♪
[slo-mo] What is--
[normally] --happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone,
and today we're talking about white balance.
More specifically, when it's important and when it's not.
So here's the debate: I stumbled upon a thread
that suggested that it's not that important
to set your white balance in-camera
if you're planning on doing post-production,
because you can always change it afterwards.
This obviously continued with comments suggesting
that that was only applicable when shooting raw,
while others insisted it was possible with any format,
and then some people said no,
it's only JPEGs that don’t work and video is fine,
and some people said video is only fine
if you shoot 10-bit-- and it went on from there.
Now, I realize for many of you, the answer
for this video might be something that you know already,
but even still, I'd like to provide you
with some tests that you can use for reference.
OK, So let's start off with raw.
Now, I've got some raw photos here,
but what I'm about to say is also true for video
if you have a camera that shoots raw video.
However, when I say “raw video,” I mean proper raw.
There's many raw light codecs, like ProRes raw,
that won't offer these results, and thus your white balance
can't be changed as easily in post when using them.
But again, this will depend on the raw light codec
you're using, and as always, your mileage may vary.
All right, so here I have three raw images
taken with drastically different white balances.
They all have a grey card in the shot
that we can use for setting the white balance in post.
And some of them are overexposed
and some of them are underexposed.
I did this intentionally, and we'll talk a bit
more about that a little bit later on.
But first, let's establish what this image
is supposed to look like.
So over here I have two images.
The first one was shot using a custom white balance
in the camera using this grey card, and the second
one was shot using auto white balance.
Now, you can see that the auto white balance,
you know, did a decent job,
but it didn't perfectly get rid of the green tint.
And the light that this was shot under sort of trips up
auto white balance systems all the time
because it has a little bit of green into it.
So what we're gonna do first is we're gonna use the dropper,
and we're gonna click on the grey card
just up in this top corner here just to set it and see
how that matches the first image, and as we can see,
they're pretty much identical now.
So now we have a baseline moving forward,
and we also know where to dropper the grey card to test
and see if the white balance will be conformed.
Now let's go ahead and apply that to the images
with the manually set white balances.
So the first one here is set to 5500K, so it's relatively
close to what the lights were running at, but again,
it's gonna be a little bit off.
So let's dropper it up here...
and I think we can say that that's probably pretty
darn close to what the custom white balance setting was,
but we can just confirm that just to make sure.
So... yeah, it looks pretty much identical.
OK, great. So we're gonna use that going forward.
Now, this one-- let's move forward one.
This one was shot at 10,000K,
so it's crazy warm.
And we'll use the dropper and we'll apply it up here.
And again, it looks pretty much identical.
There's the previous one, and there's this one again,
so I would say that’s a great result.
And then we'll go forward: this one was shot
at 2500K so it's crazy cool,
and we'll dropper in the same spot, and again...
you know, you can't really tell the difference at all.
If we zoom in, even, and look at the colours here,
I would suggest that-- yeah, like,
they're pretty much identical right across the board.
So this test confirms that yes, raw images and photos
are able to have their white balance changed
drastically in post with no discernible losses.
Now let's reset these three images,
and I'll tell you why I wear this grey shoelace.
When it comes to making these videos,
shooting the B-roll for them, or even my product photography,
my hands are often in the scene, and I don't always
remember to put out a ColorChecker or a grey card.
But if I have something consistent from scene to scene,
like this shoelace-- which happens to be
a very neutral grey-- that I can anchor to to set
the white balance off of, I find that I get
a much more consistent look throughout my shots.
I'll demonstrate this using those same three raw images.
So if we go over here-- this is the 5500K one again,
and if you grab the dropper-- and I'll just set it off
of this highlighted part of my shoelace here.
There's the white balance there.
Let's jump over to the 10,000K one.
Try to find the same spot.
And one more time with the 2500K one,
and again, try and find the same spot.
And as you can see, not only is it consistent
between the shots, but it's actually pretty close
to the previous set where we used the grey card.
Sometimes I think it might even work a little bit better
than the grey card, and I think this might be
because of how close it is to my skin, so when the light
bounces off my skin it casts a little bit of
that colour onto the bracelet, which then gets white balanced.
And I think sometimes it creates a more accurate skin tone.
Now, I'm not suggesting that everybody
should go out and get a grey shoelace
and tie it around their wrist in order to take photos,
but having something with you at all times
that is a neutral grey can be quite beneficial
to keep a consistent look throughout your shots.
Just make sure that it doesn't have its own colour, though,
or that defeats the purpose.
Just so happens that this grey shoelace
is working pretty perfectly for me.
Now let's move on to the JPEGs and try this test again.
Alright, so if we start off with the 5500K JPEG
and do the exact same thing, white balance up
in the corner here, we can see it stays pretty close.
The shift-- you know, from maybe 100 or 200K
isn't a big deal. It added a little bit of warmth
and just one point of magenta, and everything looks fine.
But if we try this same thing on the 10,000K image,
the results are much worse.
At first glance it might look like it did a pretty good job,
but if we look a little bit closer
at the colours here, we can see that compared
to the other one, we're losing a lot of intensity there.
And that's because when we pull the warmth out of the JPEG
in order to balance the white, we're also pulling
all of the intensity out of our warmer colours.
And this isn't something that can just be fixed easily
by upping the saturation, because even if you increase
the saturation in order to get the oranges right,
then when you compare to the other image you can see
that it looks completely different
because all of the colours are now too saturated.
So instead you'd have to go through individually
and tweak the colours using HSL.
Now let's try it on the 2500K image...
and, yowza! That is terrible.
So there's two major problems going on here:
the first one is that it's overexposed now,
and the second problem is that we obviously have
a terrible purple issue, which is the inverse
of what just happened with the warmer image.
So in this case, because we're adding warmth,
we're now contaminating our blues
and making them more purple.
But this is why I have two images, like I said,
that are overexposed and underexposed.
So if we try it on the image that's underexposed
and do the exact same thing, we can see that it looks
a lot better as far as exposure's concerned.
It's still crazy out of whack
with all the blues turning purple now,
and the whole image has like a... you know,
kind of purple cast to it, but the exposure's better.
And this makes sense if you think about it.
If you picture a white light as really just being
intense versions of all the colours combined,
then removing some of that colour will make
the white less intense, or darken your image.
And the reverse is true, as we see here,
when you warm up an image by adding more warmth
and more magenta, the image gets brighter.
In the case of this one that's underexposed, it got--
you know, I would say the exposure's a lot better,
but at the cost of corrupting your blacks
with a lot of purple.
So this test has two conclusions:
one, extreme white balance adjustments
are not good for JPEGs.
Small adjustments, like a couple hundred kelvin,
is gonna be fine, but going from one end of the spectrum
to the other is gonna have a terrible result.
And two, it doesn't matter if you overexpose or underexpose,
because either will cause problems depending on
whether you're warming or cooling the image.
But if you do know for sure that you're gonna
be warming the images up, then I guess
you're better off shooting a little bit darker.
But obviously the best thing to do
is to set the white balance while shooting.
And the best way to do that is to set a custom white balance
in your camera before you start shooting
now, I'm not gonna give you a tutorial on that because it
depends on your camera, and there's lots of different
ways to do it, but usually it requires you either take a photo
and then sort of scan that photo in the camera,
or to set it live, they'll put a little target,
you hold up a grey card, put the grey card on the target,
press “OK,” and then it sets the white balance.
This is usually found in “White Balance”
under “Custom White Balance.”
The second best option if you don't have a grey card would
be to use some other neutral object, like my bracelet or,
you know, a piece of paper with 18% grey printed on it.
And it's also handy if you take a couple test shots
or some frames of video with that object in the scene
so that you can use it to check white balance in post later on.
The third option, if neither of those is available,
is to eyeball it and/or set it off your lights.
So if all your lights are set to 5600K,
then set your white balance to 5600K.
But I would still probably fine-tune it after that
because sometimes cameras and lights have different opinions
on what a particular kelvin is when it comes to white balance.
And this is a lot easier to do than you think.
You basically just have to get behind your camera,
look at your screen, be looking at your scene,
bring up your white balance setting
where you can dial in the kelvin,
and then just look at the scene and look at your screen.
If you find that, “eh, it's a little bit warmer
than I want,” cool it down a little bit.
It's a little bit too cool? Warm it up.
Try and get it as close as you can just by looking at it
with your eye, and that'll make it much easier in post,
because any corrections that you have to make will be minor ones.
As a fourth option, if you don't think you're gonna remember
to set your white balance, or you just don't think
you'll have time to, I would suggest
setting a manual white balance the same way
by adjusting the kelvin to a neutral setting between,
like, 4500K and 6000K, and just leave it there.
That way, if you do need to make adjustments,
it's not gonna be too extreme because you're somewhat
in the middle, and also you'll have the advantage
of having consistency throughout your shots.
Which is why I put auto white balance
as my fifth and last place option.
As you saw in my first example,
auto white balance isn't the most reliable.
It's a lot better than being off by 2000K,
but the problem is how it changes.
If you shoot using sunlight,
whether outdoors or near a window,
the temperature can change constantly
when using auto white balance.
So that's why I'd rather set it to something manual,
like 5500K, and then even if I need to adjust it in post,
at least I have something consistent
rather than shifting throughout the shoot.
Some cameras allow you to lock the auto white balance,
which is better, because that way when you let the camera
set the white balance automatically,
you can lock it in place so that when clouds shift
in front of the sun, it's not gonna change
the white balance as you go through your shoot.
Now this method's okay, but to me it kind of reinforces
the idea that you never actually have to learn
proper techniques for white balancing,
and I think that's a bad thing.
And also, like we were talking about,
cameras aren't perfect at white balance,
whether it's that their metering is a little bit off
or that they're sensitive to certain tints,
so I find that it's never quite as accurate
as if you set it yourself,
and it's not consistent between brands.
However, auto white balance is usually fine if your images
aren't gonna be juxtaposed, because then you won't be able
to see the inconsistencies in white balance
like you would if they were in a sequence or collection.
But I would not recommend this for video,
because then every time you cut and resume,
you're gonna have a different white balance.
And speaking of video,
let's take a look at the video samples.
So here we've got some footage shot in 8-bit H.264
with a standard profile, and at the same
three manual custom white balance temperatures
from before-- the 5500, the 2500, and the 10,000.
So let's just grab the dropper here
and put it in the same corner.
Similar in results to what we got in the photos, you know,
added a little bit of magenta, and the result is fine,
the colours look OK on the Rubik's Cube.
Now let's jump over to the 10,000K one
and dropper it in the same spot...
and again, you know, it looks OK.
We have some of the same issues that we had with JPEG,
where we can see that our oranges are more subdued
when compared to the original, and we have this
other issue that I want to tell you about
which involves the highlights. Remember, I said
if things are overexposed, the problems get worse.
And sometimes this happens and you don't realize it,
or there might be something that wasn't part of the subject
but it was in the background, that when the white balance
was OK you didn't mind that it was overexposed,
but now when you change the white balance, you're like,
“that is disgusting,” and that's what happens here.
Look at this crazy, yellow, blown out,
glowy gradient that gets added with, like,
maybe even a little bit of green in it.
And it's not something that can be easily fixed.
Like, if even if you bring the highlights down,
now all you're left with is this really weird yellow thing.
So you're gonna have to go in and be tweaking all kinds
of stuff to try and restore that skin,
and if you've done this before, it still never looks great,
and it takes so much work, and you just hate yourself.
Like “why didn't I just set the white balance?”
And now if we do the 2500K and dropper it in the top corner...
[laughs] It's just absolutely terrible.
Uh-- [chuckles] Do I even need to say anything about it?
It’s-- it’s awful, right?
So as you can see, unless you record
in a proper raw format, videos are subject to the same
limitations when it comes to white balance as JPEGs are.
So consider them just like moving JPEGs.
And in the case of some cameras’ codecs,
that's exactly what they are, actually- moving JPEGs.
So what about 10-bit Log footage?
Well, over here I have three shots that are all...
shot in 10-bit, and I've already applied a LUT
to conform them to Rec.709
and made sure that the exposure was even.
So this isn't an overexposed/unexposed,
this is more of a neutral exposure.
So after droppering it, very small adjustments.
It warmed it up by, like, one notch,
and by a magenta by 0.8,
and I think that it looks like a pretty decent shot.
You know, we can increase the exposure if we want,
we can increase the saturation of it a bit,
and it's fine in both cases.
Now let's try the 10,000K image.
And we'll dropper it up here...
you know, again, not too bad.
If we compare that to the 5500K,
I would say that it did reasonably well.
There is a bit-- on the skin, there is a bit more...
...just, it doesn't blend as well.
I find that-- like, this one has, you know,
natural roll-offs, and on this one,
there are a bit of areas where the colour's kind of blotchy.
You can see some here at my fingertip that
isn't really as problematic on the 5500K shot.
But overall, I would say this is decent,
and I would say that this result is better
than the 8-bit standard profile version.
And that could be because of the 10-bit,
it could also be because of the Log.
But once again, if we try the 2500K version
and we dropper it, it doesn't even matter
that it's 10-bit, it doesn't matter
that it's Log, you just can't shift the white balance
that hard in any kind of video unless it's proper raw video.
So in conclusion, raw photos and raw video--
yes, you can dramatically change the white balance
in post without really losing anything.
But everything else-- JPEGs, 8-bit video,
10-bit video-- I shot these with DNx,
so it doesn't really matter the bit rate.
You can give it lots of bits, Log, not Log-- you can't do it.
You just can't shift the white balance that much.
Small adjustments, yes. Large adjustments, no.
And so these tests emphasize how important it is
to put thought into your white balance every time you shoot.
And I think this is a good practice to keep,
even if you shoot raw.
But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video helpful,
or at least entertaining.
And if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up,
and consider subscribing if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.
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