portrait

Getting white balance close

Blogging, colour, portrait

It’s great when you learn something new. It’s also really satisfying to get something right in camera, and this little trick seems to work well for me.

Granted, it’s quite straightforward to correct white balance in Lightroom when shooting RAW. However either I don’t have a great memory for colour, or I don’t have a great eye for it. (Maybe that’s why I like black and white!). So that means I can take ages trying to get the colours right – and I often miss the colour cast entirely.

This trick is a variation on white/grey card, and is a close to zero cost hack on the Expodisc idea – especially if you have an Aeropress! All you need is an Aeropress Filter

Here’s the photo using Auto White Balance.IMG_2491

It’s Mr. Buzzington Buzz again. He’s sitting on a blue sofa, with a north facing window to his rear left. There’s a blue cast over him.

I placed the camera in front of Mr. Buzzington, facing back to where I was going to take the photo from. With the coffee filter covering the lens I took a properly exposed shot. (i.e. the histogram was dead centre). Here it is.

IMG_2492

Not the most interesting photo! However I then used this to create a custom white balance. I use a Canon 80D, and that takes about 4 key presses.

Reshooting Mr. Buzzington Buzz (same shutter speed and aperture) gave the following result.

IMG_2493

This is a much more accurate representation of the colours – and no fiddling about in Lightroom!