Do I need to bother with the "kelvin" setting on my canon 10d?

[joseph_zarick]

I dont understand "white balance" and its relationship to "kelvin" .

Where can I learn to use these options. Or do I need to worry at all?

[john_bright]

Joseph

 

I'm not familiar with the 10D, but it makes good sense to set the White Balance to suit the appropriate lighting, especially indoors ie: tungsten, flourescent etc. I've had a great deal of success on the tungsten setting. With a couple of floods you don't need to use flash at all. Just leave it on Auto for outside shots.

[carl smith]

Joseph, the camera has an auto mode but setting the white balance manually is sometimes necessary, even measuring it is necessary. I thought the manual goes over that but I don't really know.

 

My suggestion to you is to try it out. It's not like it will cost you anything.

[Rob_L1664876404]

Joseph,

 

Kelvin is a temperature scale. The unit of measure is the same as Celsius, but zero is set at absolute zero - equivalent to -273.15 degrees Celsius. White balance (also known as color temperature) is the process of making an image appear as though it was illuminated by overhead sunlight (no orange or blue cast). Check out http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/h2/temp.shtml for a table of the color temperatures of various light sources.

[Bill C]

>> I dont understand "white balance" and its relationship to "kelvin" . Where can I learn to use these options. <<

 

joseph, if you own a digital camera, hopefully its manual tells how to use the options.

 

Here is my attempt at a simple explanation of what they mean: Your digital camera probably "sees" in terms of some version of red, green and blue. When you photograph a neutral (meaning white or some shade of gray) target, the camera would ideally have equal red, green and blue responses. In some cases, the camera may be wrong; for example, it thinks your gray card is reddish colored. In that case, you could use a manual white balance setting and photograph the gray card; the camera would recalibrate itself to make the gray card neutral again (under the specific kind of light you white balanced with). Of course, if you go to a different kind of lighting, the camera would probably be wrong again.

 

So the manual white balance routine would normally use a neutral colored reflecting target; the camera recalibrates based on how it sees that target.

 

Now, as Rob described, Kelvin is a measure of temperature. Things that get hot and glow (like a lamp filament) change their color with temperature. So if your light source is like this (hot lamp, sunlight, etc.) and you already know how hot it is (in terms of color temperature), you can set the Kelvin temperature directly in your camera. If the light source is NOT like this (fluorescent lights, sodium vapor lights, etc), it is probably best to do a manual white balance.

 

Let me know if you want me to elaborate or simplify more.

[dennis_pereira]

To get an idea how the kelvin settings work, take a picture in RAW mode under tungsten lights with auto white balance. In the file viewer utility select various kelvin settings to see the effect it has on balancing the color of the lighting. I've found that it gives more fine tuning than just selecting the tungsten setting. The jpeg that is created along with the raw image will show you what you would end up with using the auto setting.

[alex_pascual]

Does White Balance only work with RAW images? I'm still trying to learn how to set this feature on my 10D but I prefer using the Large Fine format to get more pictures on CF card... & I dont like converting those RAW pictures to JPEG specially if you shoot more than a hundred pictures.

 

Alex