White Balancing Your Camera (or Gray Balancing?)

A few years ago I did a piece on custom white balancing your camera. It is important to learn this skill to get the best looking footage, especially if shooting with an 8-bit 4:2:0 camera (like many of us use).

Interestingly, as I was doing a little research to put this piece together, I noticed that using a gray card generally produced better results than using a white card. I've had a lot of questions on why and up to now, I just assumed that it had something to do with the fact that 18% gray is closer to the luminance level that we generally shoot for skin tones. Turns out that was a decent guess, but not the whole story.

Art Adams posted an interesting piece titled, "The Secret Art of White Balancing" that goes into way more detail, particularly in light of the fact that many cameras can now capture 12-14 stops of dynamic range. To do that, cameras have a tendency to compress the highlights and shadows (even aside from log profiles, it seems) so using a target closer to the less compressed mid-tones often results in better white balance.

Definitely worth the read, if you're nerdy like that (I am).

DaVinci Resolve: Quick White Balance Correction with RGB Curves

Have you ever forgotten to set your white balance when shooting video?  Or have you downloaded your footage and realized that the color was a little, or even a lot, off? You can fix it quickly and easily in DaVinci Resolve with the RGB curves. And the same idea applies to any color grading app with RGB curves.

Now don’t let that scare you off. I used to be scared of the RGB curves. They seemed so complex and mysterious. But using this simple method, you can white balance a clip in just a few seconds!

I learned how to do this from Alex over at the new YouTube channel “Learn Color Grading”. Lots of quality tutorials on color grading with DaVinci Resolve, definitely worth your time to have a look and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/LearnColorGrading

Here are a couple of tools I use to ensure I can correct my white balance in post:

X-Rite ColorChecker Passport is a little pricey but is a professional tool with not only a white balance patch, but also standard color chips that allow you to put the ColorMatch feature in DaVinci Resolve to use - an automated way to color balance your footage.

Lastolite Ezy Balance Gray/White Card is a little less pricey and is a great, durable, foldable card you can use to white balance your footage in post, set a custom white balance in your camera, manually set your exposure, or manually focus. Great tool. I've had mine for probably 4 years now and I use it all the time.