Page 183 - Friedman Archives

White Balance 183

TIP: As of this writing CF bulbs are falling out of fashion and more
environmentally-friendly LED bulbs are now appearing. The good news is they
try hard to emulate the color spectrum put out by the CF bulbs, and that’s why
these Flourescent settings can be used for LED bulbs as well.

Flash -- the camera’s electronic flash is designed to send out all
seven colors of the rainbow, just as daylight does. However, market
research shows that people like their flash pictures to look a little
“warmer” (or perhaps more Canon-like, with some yellow added), and so
that’s what this feature does – it’s balanced for daylight, then it adds a
touch of yellow. (See Figure 5-40.)
We’ll cover the rest of the White Balance settings two sections from now.
But first I want to talk about the tool that Sony gave you for tweaking the
pre-set white balances.

TIP: While the camera offers you plenty of different ways to correct for non-
white light (including the tools described on the next few pages), and while all
of these will work well under the vast majority of circumstances, there are
extreme circumstances for which no camera will be able to compensate. For
example, shooting under those very-yellow, energy-saving sodium-vapor street
lights (if you can still find them – they’re all being replaced by LED arrays now),
or under the all-red lighting of a submarine during a red alert. In these extreme
cases, no amount of added green or blue can ever make the image look
“normal”. For everything else, use these tools!