White Balance

I am shooting some portraits for a family next week. It will be natural light with fill-in flash in a local gardens. How should I set my white balance on a 30D.

Any helpful info on white balance is appreciated. It is a concept I have a hard time grasping. I know settings are for different type lights, but what is tungsten, what is 5700 degrees Kelvin, etc. How do I keep all this straight.

Thanks for the help!
Michael

Tungsten is halogen bulbs. Rather 'Warm' (Yelowish) light. Around 3400K.
To make things confusing, a higher color temperature (say, 6000K) is a 'Cooler' color (more blueish)
Daylight (sun) is around 5500K. If your subject is in the shade, it's not lit by the sun, but by the blue sky, so the WB needs to be set higher. (Around 6500K IIRC)

Set the WB for the natural light, and filter the flash to match. Allthough if ambient is cooler than the flash, that's not such a big point: If you set WB to a more 'blueish' setting, the flash will appear a bit 'warmer', which is rather pleasing...

I think Curtis started a thread about filterin the flash a while back.

Light colour in Kelvins (not degrees Kelvin) is the temperature to which you'd heat a "black body" to achieve the same colour light. 2800 Kelvin's normal household incandescent lighting. 3200-3400 Kelvin is stage or photoflood lighting.

Sunlight is around the same colour temperature as flash, in the 5500-5700 Kelvin range. Open shade or a cloudy day will be bluer, 6000 Kelvin on up. If you're not sure, set a grey card up and photograph that to set a custom white balance.

Jon wrote in post #2276169
Light colour in Kelvins (not degrees Kelvin) is the temperature to which you'd heat a "black body" to achieve the same colour light. 2800 Kelvin's normal household incandescent lighting. 3200-3400 Kelvin is stage or photoflood lighting.

Sunlight is around the same colour temperature as flash, in the 5500-5700 Kelvin range. Open shade or a cloudy day will be bluer, 6000 Kelvin on up. If you're not sure, set a grey card up and photograph that to set a custom white balance.

K is the symbol for degrees Kelvin. Color temperature comes from the emissions of a black body radiator at a certain temperature. The Kelvin scale is a scale of temperature that has absolute zero as it's basis (add 273.15 to deg. celcius to determine degrees Kelvin)

Just a technical point. It is just important to remember that what we call warmer colors have a cooler color temperature and vice versa.

That helps a lot right there. Thanks! any more pointers are still appreciated.

If you are really unsure you could always set the WB as you see fit (with a custom white balance setting for example), but then shoot in RAW giving you the ability to tweak things on the computer afterwards. Am not usually the biggest advocate of RAW that you will find on these forums, however whilst learning about WB its a good tool to use.

Good luck

Paul

avaloncm wrote in post #2276127
I am shooting some portraits for a family next week. It will be natural light with fill-in flash in a local gardens. How should I set my white balance on a 30D.

Any helpful info on white balance is appreciated. It is a concept I have a hard time grasping. I know settings are for different type lights, but what is tungsten, what is 5700 degrees Kelvin, etc. How do I keep all this straight.

Thanks for the help!
Michael

I would say don't worry so much if you don't understand WB. We used to use daylight film without any worries (yes, you can use filters, but you don't have to). I'd recommend you set to daylight (the 'sun' symbol) and that'll be plenty near enough for daylight/flash. You can still apply 'warm-up' filter effects in Photoshop etc. if you want to.

I notice a pedants' argument brewing - strictly speaking it is 'kelvins' (with a small k), not 'degrees Kelvin', but many people say the latter and we know what they mean.

Madweasel wrote in post #2277106
I notice a pedants' argument brewing - strictly speaking it is 'kelvins' (with a small k), not 'degrees Kelvin', but many people say the latter and we know what they mean.

Per a quote from th US metric association web site:
The kelvin (K) temperature scale is an extension of the degree Celsius scale down to absolute zero, a hypothetical temperature characterized by a complete absence of heat energy. Temperatures on this scale are called kelvins, NOT degrees kelvin, kelvin is not capitalized, and the symbol (capital K) stands alone with no degree symbol. [In 1967 the new official name "kelvin" and symbol "K" were set by the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM).]

Which was my point that Kelvins are equivalent to a degree on the celsius scale. and that a kelvin is a degree of temperature.

Sorry....the scientist in me coming out. Isn't science swell