Cool little white balance trick

[M Carter]

When manually balancing for daylight sources like LEDs or Kinos - I always keep an 82A filter and balance through that (and then I put it away). Gives a nice warmth that doesn't look tungsten-ish. Tried balancing through 1/4 CTB, but I'd always lose my little scrap of gel; but I found an old 77mm from the film days and keep it with my 4x4's, doubt I'll ever use it as I only shoot B&W film.

Am I the only one who does this? I find that in post, I'm always pushing some warmth into my skin tones, I do this for interviews every time now. 

[Lintelfilm]

I tend to put blues and magentas into skin tones and sometimes deliberately white balance a lower kelvin than perfect just to give the image a blue tint! I guess this stuff is subjective

 

[M Carter]

I once white balanced to an orange bottle of hand cleaner in an industrial shoot to get a really deep green-blue. It would have been way too far a push in post for an 8-bit file.

I've always thought it would be handy to have a little book of painted cards in warm and cool tones; since WB is a combo of tint and temp, you could get some more variants beyond just color temp. (Though I like how the NX1 lets you adjust both matrixes independently and manually).

[tupp]

I used to carry around the 3 1/2"x4" cine swatch books for GAM-color lighting gels to do this trick:

         

These larger swatch books cover the front of many lenses, and they are often handed out free at trade shows.  They usually include all of the CTBs and CTOs from 1/8 to "extra," along with the same range in Plus Green and Minus Green.

 

I would sometimes white balance to just 1/8 CTB or to a sandwich of 1/8 CTB and 1/8 Plus Green.  Eventually, I put gaffer tape tabs on the edge of the color swatches that I most often used.

 

There are other gel manufacturers that give away larger swatch books.  Lee is another popular brand:

 

[Cinegain]

This is a cool one: http://www.expoimaging.com/product-overview.php .

[M Carter]

Another bonus for the swatch books - if your camera has a small detection area (like the Nikons with manual and the NX1) you just need to cover that area of the lens. Even with a deep matte box, I can hold a circular filter and just cover the sensing area and it's good. My bigger video cams seem to be the whole sensor though.

[Lintelfilm]

It kind of irritates me that you can't white balance on the Pocket camera. You just have to estimate (or go with the rating of your lights).

[M Carter]

Wish i could save manual WB's on the NX1, too. My Nikons have always had that. I could even name them, have one for my old-yellowed softbox with speedotrons even (for product stills).