1. White balance and colour control

2. Why not just use auto settings?
This image was taken with the camera on auto white-balance.
But this is what the scene actually looked like.

3. White balance allows you to control the colour of the image.
Different light-sources create different coloured light which can make your shots look too yellow or too blue.
By choosing a white-balance option you can control the look of your footage.

4. Auto – don’t use this one
Incandescent – old-fashioned lightbulbs
Fluorescent – tubes
Direct sunlight – outdoors on a sunny day
Flash – colour neutral for still photography
Cloudy – this is the best one to use for most filming outdoors
Shade – for still photography
Chose colour temperature - advanced
White balance preset – advanced

5. Try matching the white balance on the camera to the lighting you are working with then take a test shot to see if you are right.
Never use the Auto setting. The camera will change the white balance from shot to shot leading to inconsistent results.
Auto Incandescent Fluorescent Direct sunlight Flash Cloudy Shade

6. You can fine-tune these pre-sets on some cameras to make the image warmer (A) or cooler (B), greener (G) or more magenta (M).

7. You can deliberately use the ‘wrong’ white-balance setting to give more creative control.
Florescent
Flash
Shade
Tungsten

8. On some cameras you can dial in a Kelvin (°K ) value to set the colour balance very precisely.
3,000 °K (looks colder)
5,600 °K (looks normal)
10,000 °K (looks warmer)

9. You can change the saturation of your camera by using the Set Picture Control menu.
Neutral gives the best results for most situations.

10. Standard Neutral Vivid

11. Some colours are associated with emotions or carry semiotic connotations.
Blue:
Tranquillity
Peace
Trust
Blue:
Cold
Fear
Sadness
Depression
Gold:
Wealth
Wisdom
Luxury
Yellow:
Warmth
Domesticity
Happiness
Pink:
Softness
Innocence
Childhood
Red:
Love
Passion
Heat
Anger
Grey:
Boredom
Sadness
Monotony
Classy
Green:
Nature
Peacefulness
Envy
Jealousy

12. Task:
Working in pairs, film a series of 10 second clips of your partner using one of the lighting set-ups in the classroom. You must use every one of the white balance pre-sets:
Auto
Incandescent
Fluorescent
Direct sunlight
Cloudy
Shade
Cinematography specialists:
Film new clips of your partner using a modified version of the cloudy setting or by dialing in a Kelvin (°K) setting.