The story about the White Balance

What is white balance? All digital cameras are dealing with the following difficulty: they doesnt know what white is in a picture. Why is that matter? Just like the medical analyzers dealing with calibrators to have a reference point in a measurement, the same way the digital cameras needs one. In some medical analyzers (Advia biochemistry line for example) there is a so called blank calibrator, usually DI water. It is a starting reference point to which all other data is compared. In the same way we have to "calibrate" our camera, so that he can know to which initial value should he compare other values in a picture. Prior to recording the picture to the memory card, the camera samples dot by dot the full resolution of a CCD (or CMOS) reading two important values for every dot: the intensity of lightness

and the color value. The data amount reserved for the first will determine the dynamic (the difference the color space. In this process the color value is measured by comparing it to one absolute value which is absolute white. And the story here begins to be more complex: What is absolute white?

between the darkest but not yet black and brightest but not yet white) of the picture, while the second

value, limit in a color space used to describe a picture. Even if it is not considered to be a color at all, it has one common attribute with them: His appearance is determined by the wavelength of the light it reflects, or absorb. The white is absorbing minimal wavelength information, and reflects almost all. But if the white reflects almost all of the wavelength information then we actually dont see white, then the light itself. But lights differs one from another: beside intensity, nature, directionality, linearity, there is one thing more, very important in this story: temperature. Whenever you buy a

White is not considered to be a color at all. It is an extreme value - next to black -, or border

fluorescent bulb there is a markation on it (at least on Osram, Philips, GE...), a value measured in Kelvin similar to the following: 2700K, 6500K, 4000K. What is the meaning of these markations? They are indicating the color temperature of a light source.

Here is a little practical demonstration: Mount two lamps with the following bulbs to light about the same spot on a table, where a white sheet is placed: a fluorescent bulb with markation 6500K an incandescent lamp (wolfram classic - its color temperature is around 2800K)

Turn on first the 6500K fluorescent bulb and wait for 30 second. Your eyes should be all the time on the white paper. In a second turn off the fluorescent bulb and turn on the incandescent bulb. appear as a white one. In a second swap again the two lights (bulb off, fluorescent on). What happened? The sheet appeared for a few seconds as a blue one! Because of the maximum wavelength reflectance of the white sheet the eye actually saw the color of and presented it as white. This process in a digital camera is called AWB - automatic white balance. The human eye is an amazing thing. It has automatic white balance all the time. It works so good, that we need different tricks to cheat it. If you take a white sheet of paper it will appear to you What have you saw? The sheet immediately turns orange! Wait for another 30 sec. The sheet will again

the light (orange-ish or blue-ish) for a few second, until our brain did not "calibrate" it automatically,

as a white sheet. But, if you try to compare 5 sheets of white A4 papers from different manufacturer and type, one next to another, you will spot an interesting thing: some of them will appear orangeish, some reddish, some bluish, and some even greenish. Why? Because of the small difference our a bit confused. He doesnt know which one is a reference because of a small difference. Digital cameras are far not so superior as our brain is. They often take the most intense part of

eye (to be more precise: the center in our brains which is decoding the informations from our eyes) is

a picture declaring it white, and building all other colors from that base. But there are problems with that approach: what if there is not even a small piece of white in a picture? Well, our buddy will be confused, that is for sure! Newer cameras are superior to the older ones, but even with the most modern ones there is still a section where we can choose between the different white balance

settings. If you enter in such setting of an average camera you will notice something like this: bulb, fluorescent, fluorescent H, Sun, Sun and Clouds, AWB, Custom. Sometimes - actually often - there will be small icons representing all these, except the AWB, it will stay as it is, and Custom: will be marked environment we are about to take a picture is having a color temperature about 2700K. Fluorescent 4200K, Fluorescent H 6500K, Sun 5600K, Sun and Clouds 7000K-11000K. These values may differ from camera to camera slightly. Finally the custom is a case when we point the camera so that the picture is occupied with at least with two opposed triangles with a square between them. The bulb would indicate that the light of the

75% of white (a white sheet, or a wall) and press a dedicated button. This way the camera is set to a custom white balance, which can be of any color temperature. Professionals are not using pure white for this purpose. They are using gray cards, which are 18% gray white cards, especially calibrated, because the best result are achieved in this way. So, finally, the conclusions: with the help of the white balance we are able to tell to our camera

what is the color temperature of the light we are taking pictures under. If these settings are correct white will be white, and the colors of the objects will appear natural in our pictures. If not, strange the same composition is placed next to a bad one. Sometime it is desirable to intentionally set the finally some examples!

anomalies will occur: often they are not spotted, all till the moment when a good balanced picture of white balance to a wrong value for achieving a special effect. But enough with the writing, let us see

Color temperatures of light with WB symbols.

White balance symbols in a digital camera

An example of good WB on the left and bad WB on the right of the same picture

My own examples:

Cloudy day, the rain just begins to fall to a small lake called Tonia. Sun+Clouds WB

The same picture taken with AWB settings. The camera did not handle well this situation.

Sremski Karlovci. The Chapel of Peace in yellow, where the round table was first used in history in 1699. AWB colors are inaccurate but pleasant due to warmer tonality

The same, but WB is Daylight - or icon of the Sun. Colors more accurate but the tonality is cold

And finally, my favorites, the sunset in Novi Sad:

WB: Sun, or Daylight, or 5400K

WB: Bulb, or Tungsten, or 3200K.

orange one assumes a warm summer evening. If you observe closely you will notice that the color of

Again, the bluish variant is colder, and it brings us the mood of the night, while the first - the

the watch tower behind the tree is yellowish, while on the second is white. Despite of the obvious WB error both pictures are acceptable, it depends on what the author wanted to present to the observer.

The Danube Park in Novi Sad: arround 12h.

WB: Daylight, but nice warm tones are present due to high light temperature values (probably arround 7-8000K)

WB: AWB The camera handled well this situation. Colors are accurate, but the tonality is colder

Sunset from the Smederevo fortress. The River is the Danube.

WB: Bulb, Tungsten, or 3200K. Beutifull sky rendering, but cold

WB: AWB, which was close to Dayight, according to the warm tones. My favorite. :-)

Tips: Accurate WB will not always give pleasant emotion in a picture. The reason for this is that the human psyhe is more keen to enjoy in warm tones then cold ones, even if they are realistic and accurate. AWB will work good under Daylight, when there is a bright sunny day. It will work bad under

tungsten light, therefore it is advised to use the camera tungsten WB (Bulb, 3200K) preset setting under such conditions. Beside the achievement of software technology like Photoshop, Gimp and other where is

possible to change and correct the white balance, it is much easier to take a picture under different WB settings. In this manner only smaller adjustments will be occasionally required, which will not affect other parameters of the picture in a negative way. And finally I wish to encourage you to experiment with these settings, and to discover new

ways to express your creativity!

I hope so that I was successful in my efforts to get you closer to the concept of the white balance, and that you will have in future some improvements in your photography. Forgive me for my English, I never had a class in my life, I learned German at the school, I

hope so that it is at least understandable.

If you have some tips, suggestions, critics, they are always welcome to my adress, as you are welcome to visit my beautiful town, Novi Sad in Serbia. Till the next short script I wish you to have a nice time!

FSE Mihalj Klajner kmihael@eunet.rs