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Camera
Operation > White Balance
ABOVE: The woman is lit with incandescent
(household) lights. BELOW: Same woman
lit with fluorescent lights. If you
saw them separately, your probably
would not recognize either as "wrong." But side-by-side you can see the difference.
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The white balance button (also known as the
color balance button), may seem like one of the
more obscure camera controls, but it's actually one
of the most important.
To understand white balance,
you first need to understand the notion that every light
source has a different color. The sun, for example,
has a bluish tone (which is why the sky looks blue).
Fluorescent lights are greenish, and regular 'ol light
bulbs are orangish. Car headlights are beet red. Of course, you probably don't realize this because
human eyes have a near-magical ability to compensate
for these color variations and make everything look
normal. But if you play close attention, you can notice
the differences. Now, what does all this have to do with
your camcorder? The thing is, unlike human eyes, camcorders
do NOT have a perfect ability to adjust for the overall
color of a scene. So you need a button to help make
the adjustment. If you don't use the white balance button,
your shots might end up with an overall bluish cast,
or yellowish tone. The white balance button makes the
colors come out "true." Here's
one way to test this out: If you have a room with both
fluorescent lights and regular (incandescent) light
bulbs, try viewing your skin under each light source.
You'll notice you look tan under the orangish incandescent
lights; and sickly green under fluorescent lights. The
illustration on this page gives you some idea of the
difference. (Helpful hint: Schedule your next big date
in a restaurant that does NOT have fluorescent lights--you'll
look better!)
Another
way to grasp this idea is to try on those sunglasses
with the bright yellow (or any color) lenses. At first,
everything looks yellowish, but after a few minutes,
your brain compensates and the colors look pretty much
normal. This is a process our eyes (and brain) go through
constantly.
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