Do you white balance

[enny]

How important is white balance, for dslr video shooting? and do you guys do it for every shoot or every location change? What do you use to white balance your shoot just white piece of paper or gray card? and is there difference using gray card or white and last question is there are some cheap ebay gray cards from china for 3 dollars vs 35 from usa are they any good

 

Thanks

[Inazuma]

I normally use the camera's presets and sometimes change the hue/tint if I think it would improve the shot (btw cheaper DSLR's might not have this feature). From time to time I have used this which has a grey card on the back. Other times when I didn't have it with me I've used anything around that's white or grey, including my car or the back of my phone. Honestly I don't think it matters that much, but the real pros around here might have a different opinion.

[andy lee]

I dont white balance as I have way of shooting that works for me

I shoot day interiors lit to 3200k at 4000k as it gives a warmer looking skin tone

and I shoot day exteriors at 6400k all the time cloudy sunny or over cast as I prefer the warmer tones

I shoot night exteriors at 2500k as it makes a cooler blue tone I prefer .....and it kills sodium vapour street lights too

 

so my whites are completely off technically but I like the look,

 

It all gets messed with in the grade anyhow so it never looks like it came out the camera.

[MOONGOAT]

White balance is very important. Often essential to get right in-camera.

 

You get a feel for what the colour temperature should be so you can set your cameras white balance accordingly. Eg: You're indoors using Blondie 2K's and Redheads, you set to 3200k. You're using HMI's exclusively, 5600k. You're outdoors using only natural light with no cloud coverage during the middle of the day, 5600k, etc. Of course there's also a creative choice in what you set your camera to. You don't have to be locked in to the 'correct' setting, although it's a good place to start.

 

Also depending on your cameras codec and colour bit depth you have more flexibility in post for correcting white and black levels. If you're shooting 8bit H.264 you better make sure you get your white balance mostly correct in-camera, but if you're shooting RAW you can almost afford to white balance entirely in post (not good practice though).

 

Also 18% grey cards are mostly for exposure, not white balance. Use a piece of pure white card for a reference point in post. You can get greycards that have pure white, pure black and 18% grey on them. That's a good choice.