Warming Card White Balance

[Don Greening]

[Robert Mosner] “I would like to get warmer skin tones.”

The w/b preset for outside is 5600K and 3200K for incandescent lighting inside. Just do some tests shooting a live human being outside. The dead ones don’t work well at all. Start lowering the kelvin numbers until you get the look you want. Use that as a new picture profile w/b preset. To warm up daylight kelvin you need to w/b with an orange card. The amount of orange will determine how ‘warm’ you want the shot to be.

– Don

Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[Rick Diamond]

Don, I’m afraid that’s incorrect. To warm up an image you need to white balance to a blue card. In the past, I’ve put color correction gel in front of the lens and white balanced through it. You can use Roscoe 1/8 blue (3216). With the EX, you can use a color preset and use that as a picture profile as Don mentioned. I keep a picture profile on my EX3 at 6000K. This warms an exterior image just slightly. For more warmth, increase the number.

[Don Greening]

Do I have it backwards? If I’m inside and using incandescent lighting and want to balance them with the outside light coming in I use blue gel. Works as expected. So If I’m outside and want to warm up the shot wouldn’t I try to get the picture closer to 3200K?

– Don

Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[Rick Diamond]

To balance 3200K lights to daylight, you would blue gel the lights. That effectively brings up the color temperature of the lights closer to daylight. Now, if the camera is preset on 5600K the image should look pretty good. However, if you were to white balance using an orange card/gel you would be nulling orange out of the image, therefore creating a bluer image. Taking the exterior scenario, to warm up an image, and you were using daylight color temperature lights, like HMI or daylight Kino Flos, you could then put orange gel (CTO) in front of the lights. If you’re using available light, which most likely will be the case, you would white balance through a blue gel, use a blue card or preset to a higher color temperature. This will null out some blue, therefore creating a warmer/oranger image.

Rick

[Don Greening]

I like this Rick guy. He’s smart 🙂 Thanks, Rick, for educating me. I guess that’s why I leave the lighting to the lighting guys.

– Don

Don Greening
A Vancouver Video Production Company
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[Rick Diamond]

Thanks Don. Anytime you need help in your neck of the woods…I love Vancouver!

Rick

[Rick Diamond]

Robert, the scenario mentioned above assumes that the outside color temperature is 5600K. This may not be the case. On a cloudy day, for instance, the color will be bluer, sometimes a lot bluer. The best thing to do is get an accurate white balance and adjust from there. So, if the white balance you get is, say, 6300K, set the preset slightly higher than that to achieve a warmer image. Of course, your white balance will probably change throughout the event.

Rick

[Greg Ondera]

I like those warm cards from Vortex https://www.vortexmedia.com/WC_VIDEO.html however, if I want to correctly white balance I always use a 18.5% gray card from any photo shop at $7 to get it right. If you don’t want to spend the dough on warm cards, do you have a color gel book? Use a slight blue to warm up, orange to cool down–opposite colors for the opposite effect.

I’m curious why you want to warm up the subjects?

Greg Ondera
http://www.Plexus.tv
http://www.SurgeonToday.org

[Clint Fleckenstein]

Sub-zero here again today…I don’t just want to warm up subjects, I also want to warm up the operator! 🙂

Cf

[Robert Mosner]

Thanks for the info. I was under the impression a slight blue card would be used to offset for warming skin tones. All the warming cards I’ve seen are more of an slight redish color.