White Balance: My (slightly odd) Approach

Squarespace link for 10% off: www.squarespace.com/seantucker
My new magazine 'PARABLE' in store: www.seantucker.photography/st...
MIXAM: Printing for Zines and Books
I've partnered with MIXAM to bring you a limited-time discount. You can use this link: mixam.com/?Influen... and the first 50 orders who use the code 'SEAN5' at checkout will get 5% off their first order. Only one use per customer.
Registration for our 2024 Tuscany Retreat: ulysse-retreats.com/registration
My links:
"The Meaning in the Making": www.seantucker.photography/th...
My Instagram: / seantuck
My Website: www.seantucker.photography/
Sign up for monthly emails: www.seantucker.photography/co...
Music licensed with Epidemic Sound:
'Connection ' by Aerian
'The Air You Breathe' by Aerian
In this video I share my 'slightly odd' approach to white balance to make sure I'm capturing the world as my eye sees it. I talk through what white balance is, how it affects the colours in our images, and my reasons for a, perhaps unusual, choice.
#streetphotography #whitebalance #5500k

[@brentmiller3250]

When I shot film, before the digital revolution, I would pick my film stock with a specific intention … based on the lighting conditions I was expecting. But once I started shooting digital, first with Canon, and then later with Fujifilm, I just set my WB to auto. It was a case of “set it, and forget it.” But honestly, why in the world would I leave it up to the camera (today), when in the past I always seriously considered it. Thanks for resetting my perspective. Well done!

[@Millie-um2bi]

Auto WB will also sometimes make different decisions during the course of a shoot which makes editing a batch of photos consistently so much harder!

[@GlennZucman]

I'm with you, Brent! Back in the film era I paid a lot of attention to color temperature. Camera auto white balance was a big change. Another big change is that so much of lighting has transitioned from 3200K tungsten to 5500K daylight LED. In the past, I had to gel windows so the daylight coming in would match the hot, tungsten lights (or vice versa), but now it's often the case that everything is daylight balanced. I do still gel windows with ND so they aren't blown out vis-a-vis the interior lighting, but I don't typically color balance these days. Anyway, like you, I sort of forgot about color temperature in the transition. Sean's video is a simple but bold wake-up call that we should be paying more attention to! As he describes, there are times when we don't want White Balance set at 5500K, like a white wedding dress. Also, with sports, I think a blue overcast day, or an orange tungsten gym, or a green-cast gym, in all those cases, I'd prefer a neutral color balance. But, exactly as he describes, for street, photojournalism, documentary, and other scenarios, it makes total sense to let the images reflect the color of the light as experienced, not wiped out by auto white. How did I not think of this before!???

[@ReclusiveEagle]

@@Millie-um2bi Not even sometimes. On a sunny day, depending on if you are pointing at a sunny area or a shady area, or depending on your subject, you can watch WB shift dramatically as you pan. Recently I had my camera pointed towards a cut tree branch, some of the leaves had begun to turn brown. Depending on if I was focused on the green grass in the background or the brown leaves in the foreground (Both in sunny conditions), WB shifted from 6500 to 3500

[@Millie-um2bi]

@@ReclusiveEagle yeah see that's why I turned that shit off so fast hahaha

[@bngr_bngr]

I just adjust it in post. I don’t worry about how it looks in the camera.

[@-AtomsPhere-]

I’ve been applying this advice since this video dropped and I swear my photography has improved DRAMATICALLY

[@nadirz6552]

You vastly underestimate how much our eyes adjust to light temperature, the pictures with AWB are closer to the scene when you saw it in person, not after the fact when viewing on a monitor with a different light temperature around. Where I live sandstorms are a frequent occurrence, and going from the sepia-like outside to inside with a white or cool lighting makes interiors look freezing cold blue. White LEDs turn into blue neon, after a few minutes your eyes adjust and it's white again.

[@livinagoodlife]

our minds actually fill in missing details. If we go into a scene that is lit up by tungsten, our eyes may adjust white balance slightly but its our minds that will make more sense of what the actuality might be. It really depends how familiar you are of that scene in different lights as to how you perceive it. That few minute adjustment you speak of is not a mechanism of the eyes but your brain making that adjustment. You could argue that the cold blue when you come back inside is the 'real' colour. Your eyes merely receive the information for our brains to process. It would be an interesting experiment to get people to reproduce colours of objects within an unfamiliar scene that is lit up by different kelvins of light to see how they are remembered.

[@nadirz6552]

@@livinagoodlife true that it's the brain doing the correction, as eyes are just receptors. But I find it hard to argue that the blue tone is the ground truth, because it's the result of being outside where everything is orange (think Breaking Bad Mexico filter, but even more intense), so your vision cools things down a lot. This results in a blue tone when going inside where there is "white" lighting because everything is blue-shifted.

[@Sooch900]

It’s crazy, I’ve been shooting for 14 years. I’ve watched hundreds of KZbin videos on photography, and this is the first time I completely understood HOW white balance works. Don’t get me wrong I’ve used white balance expertly over the years to correct colors and also creatively, but that white paper with the color slider made it finally click for me. Props on the teaching skills! I appreciate it, thank you!

[@gabolujan3109]

I know!

[@freekvanootegem7462]

This!

[@gabolujan3109]

@@freekvanootegem7462 that

[@gabolujan3109]

@@Bledder typical photographer always putting down another photographer. This is why we can’t have community.

[@schm147]

​@@Bledder how's the weather up there on that high horse? The information in this video is demonstrably NOT common sense. Get over yourself.

[@itsjorgieeSF]

The quality of both explanations and simultaneously showing examples 🔥

[@MSladekPhoto]

I have never thought of white balance this way before. Thanks for the clear explanation and offering this as food for thought. I think I'll give it a try!

[@errole]

Even with flash?

[@errole]

What about flash?

[@bricehendriks]

Flash anyone?

[@PitNeex]

We were so happy to have the WB auto correction that we forgot that a white paper under a lamp should be orange 😅 Thanks for the reminder, great video as always! 👍 I'll definitely experiment more with the WB settings

[@StoicJason]

I really love it when Sean drops a new video. It’s just a bright spot in my week.

[@Daniel_Ilyich]

Bruh, you need to get out more. Don't get me wrong, Tucker's vids are great...but a bright spot?

[@StoicJason]

@@Daniel_Ilyich maybe keep your opinions to yourself? 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@seantuck]

Thanks mate.

[@Daniel_Ilyich]

@@StoicJason Occasionally.

[@iammarkross]

…but is it a 5500K bright spot?

[@bodowoehner7859]

Old guy here and I use white balance creatively. Just used, what pleases the image. But I never got the “how stuff works” part, which left me always wanting to “really understand”. That strip thingy did it for me, brilliant ! 😀

[@jason.coward]

After watching this video, I realized I've never fully understood white balance in digital photography. This made all the pieces I've tried to learn come together for me. Thank you for being the incredible communicator you are, Sean!

[@alestomsic]

After 50 years of photography, hobby only, I realized the deep truth of how we see and yes, film was as it was. Digital wants to make it better, what is already perfect. Thank you.

[@elram2649]

Yes! Beautiful creation!

[@Dewabarasunderan]

Film cameras could not accurately depict what the human eye can see. Digital cameras are not yet able to, but they’re getting closer. Film was not “perfect” in the sense of color accuracy.

[@jonfletcher147]

Master of explanation. A great teacher….if anybody asked for an explanation of something, I’d direct them to your channel. I can see many photographers setting their WB to 5500k now from Auto, including myself! And for me, rightly so.

[@Millie-um2bi]

Sean I've been doing this too! It's good to see others use WB this way. After starting photography and learning about WB I pretty quickly discovered that id shooting in uncompressed RAW I could just leave it in one spot and that the in-camera WB doesn't change the data collected, it just embeds a WB setting that your editing software will pickup and set the settings to automatically. You can get the exact same result if you set it in post as you can if you set it in camera! Once I learnt this I decided to leave it at 5500k for the sake of consistency. Always having the same starting WB has given me a consistent reference to understand what temperature light sources are and how my camera sees them. It's allowed me to become aware of how my brain compensates for WB changes when I'm just looking at the world and has trained me to understand temperatures of light sources so much better than I would have if I set WB in camera! I would encourage others to try this way of doing WB too, even if it's only for a couple months as a learning experience.

[@realthoprivate]

An alternative, of course, is to leave the camera on auto WB and instead have Lightroom apply a specific temperature when importing. Then the images will look the same after imported, "be consistent", but you still have the camera's auto values stored in the RAW and can be used if needed. Note also, that WB is not stored in the RAW as a Kelvin number. That is why the kelvin-setting in the camera will not yield the similar number showing in Lightroom.

[@Millie-um2bi]

@@realthoprivate also a good option yes!

[@Giorginho]

@@realthoprivate So would you me matching the temperature in lightroom by yourself while editing?

[@XDtaylormagic]

I'm a glad people are thinking more about how the camera interprets colors in their images! I would be careful with using white balance as a creative control though. White balance is used to control the center of the colors captured by the camera for all other color controls (e.g. saturation, hue, etc.). Definitely change the colors in your images in creative ways that depart from reality, just be careful with which controls you are using (and understand the impacts between the sliders)!

[@RasheedKhan-he6xx]

Not surprisingly as I'm merely an amateur and Sean is one the best there is, I completely subscribe to what he says around minute 9. Perfect white balance robs ambiance but strictly staying at 5500K tends to exaggerate colour-casts the moment the lighting strays in either direction. Now obviously its a matter of personal preference if you want to keep it like that but I too tend to pull back a bit in post or if I remember, in camera. One thing, Sean says RAW has a ton of latitude. He's oversimplifying for our benefit. RAW doesn't actually give a hoot about your white balance setting, that is applied afterwards during RAW conversion so you can put it anywhere you like and it shouldn't affect image quality in the slightest. A bit more information that might interest some - First, daylight temperature depends greatly on where you are shooting. Generally the farther from the equator the further light from the sun has to travel through our atmosphere and this tends to absorb blue light, resulting in natural light at midday that is quite warm. Thus daylight in (say) Birmingham is a good deal warmer in tone that it is in Chennai (latitudes 52 north and 13 north respectively). The midpoint daylight setting in Chennai is not 5500K but 6400K. Shall I ramble on? This at first seems counterintuitive: why is the light in the tropics cool and in the arctic warm? Well perhaps simply because there were misnamed. A blue flame is hotter than a red-orange flame so whilst, if applied correctly, blues should have been called hot and reds cool, it turns out our brains start to break at that point. Because since we lived in caves we've associated a flickering orange fire with warmth and many a proto-human has probably singed his fur on a glowing red ember. Secondly, the interesting bit about daylight colour temperature is the effect it has on human culture. Because blue light is kind of cold and desaturating, can even look slightly metallic, tropical cultures love bright and saturated colours. You see it in the clothes, in the art and in the architectural decoration. And some may notice that the the same pink, green, turquoise and gold saree that looks quite opulent in Colombo looks frankly a bit garish when worn in New York, whilst tourists fresh off the plane from Malmo landing in Bangkok look somewhat wan and anaemic until they start to develop a bit of a tan. Sorry for going on for so long. Colour fascinates me. :) Edit: Just a footnote - I forgot to mention however that I slightly disagree with the bit around minute 12, that our eyes are daylight white balanced. First - daylight where? If I live all my life in Lagos (latitude 6N) it would be quite a handicap to have my eyes biologically set to 5500K. Secondly, most computers and phones you may have noticed have a night light setting to ease eye strain. This is because if you are in a tungsten lit room and someone hands you a sheet of white paper - you see a sheet of white paper. You do not see a sheet of orange paper, your brain (not your eyes) has already made the adjustment for you*. So here's a tip to help those of you who work late at your computers and suffer from eye strain. Hold a white piece of paper next to your monitor and then lower the temperature on your monitor until the screen and the paper look about the same. Second tip, reduce the brightness until that looks about the same too. Your eyes will thank you and as long as you are not doing colour critical work* you will soon forget that you have the night light setting on. *however if they actually handed you a sheet of orange paper your brain might still see it as white. Because it matches the colour of the light, that's the point at which our brain can get fooled. For colour critical work therefore you need balanced lighting or if you know the lighting that will be used by your viewers you should work in similar light. Maybach and Lexus for example have light booths in their main showrooms where they can park the car and change the ambient light to match the light where you live. This way you can see what it will look like when you get it home.

[@masononemine1702]

I think if you shoot into the sun with auto white balance at Afternoon when the sun is exactly in the middle of the sky, you would probably get a more accurate number. for me its around 5100k which doesnt make sense but alright

[@kainthjaskaran]

Fascinating stuff! Thank you.

[@CharlesLambert-tx9jj]

Our job as photogs is to create, either in our style or the style desired by the client. For me, the bottom line is WB can be adjusted in post so I don't get too worried about setting in camera, except when I need to represent the actual color as it was during the shoot. So, like Sean, I prefer to stick with the basic 5500K unless there is a need for a specific setting. Love this channel, always a fair, balanced and thoughtful approach to our craft... and Sean just seems like a darn decent human being!

[@seantuck]

Thanks so much Charles.

[@frankc3834]

First new info from KZbin about photography in ages for me. Thank you Sean.

[@PaulSaxbyPhotography]

In 38 years as a full time pro, I don' think I have ever used Auto White balance. I work in exactly the same way you do, I leave it set to 5600K. The only time I change it is if I have a colour critical job that needs to render truly accurate colours. In that case I use an X-Rite Colour Checker to create custom colour profiles. I've nothing against using auto, its just not what I do. I worked with film for so long, when I changed to digital white balance wasn't really something I thought about. I just used the camera as if it were loaded with daylight balanced film. Great video Sean, I wish more people created content like yours, Thank you.

[@maxx-er3fj]

Maybe its the fact you learned to shoot with daylight balanced film so it just became natural. I leave it in auto, and make camera white balance shift slightly turned to amber. Honestly canon auto wb works good for me, but I want to start shooting at manual because it gives richer colors when set correctly. I will try to keep it at 5500 for street photography, and try to implement that knowledge in my portrait and car shots

[@eyeseedata]

The depth of your explanation and your visual props are what make you such a great communicator. The video length also hits the sweet spot. Thanks.

[@rupertwilliams8695]

"But raw files have a ton of latitude" - Not super important here, but WB settings or auto-WB do not affect the raw file at all, data captured is the same regardless. It will affect what is loaded into your processing application though.

[@felixmarschner5590]

Exactly!

[@D1G1TALSYNAPS3]

I always leave it on “daylight”. So I’ve been doing this. I love it.

[@MrHirschkeule]

Without having watched your video before, yesterday evening I came to the same conclusion :D Glad I'm not the only one who likes his images like he saw them. Cheers for you thaughts!

[@coyotemadness]

The watercolor on paper is great and gets the idea across without needing a bunch of motion graphics. Cleverly done.

[@cashoyboy]

after going from real photography to 3D rendering back to real photography i found white balance really confusing and this completely explains what i was trying to figure out.

[@markmellor9344]

I'm very new to photography and you are showing me so much stuff in your videos, Sean. Thank you for the very frank, honest and easy to follow way that you explain things.

[@Mel-95]

My understanding of white balance was poorly lacking, but I did not know why, until now. Your video is a great example of taking an idea that appeared on the periphery (conversation with a friend) and making it into something that will resonate with many people. That is the art of it.

[@BRZDR]

Fascinating. I shot on the underdog, Pentax, and I loved how warm the pictures were out of camera. Recently got the Zf, and have been running AWB in "WBa2 - Keep Warm Lighting Colours" to get a similar look. I can't wait to go out and play with 4.5-5.5k and start trying to preserve the natural lighting of the scene.

[@blivieriphoto]

I’ve always set my camera on ‘daylight’ just because I was too lazy to always adjust my settings. And didn’t want auto because I never want my camera to make my decisions. Being a landscape / nature photographer, it seems to work out well for me. Thanks for explaining it!!

[@randall.chamberlain]

You're a fantastic teacher mate.

[@studiojege287]

Good video! Very well explained and argumented, well done!

[@shyun4313]

Thank you for making a video that helps me a lot 🙏

[@herbertandrewdutton]

Same here, always has useful tips. Thanks Sean!

[@michaelajoseph6856]

Outstanding! Thank you!

[@wildzenventures]

Great explanation! Thank you

[@jkbrwn]

I can't wait to try this out, really good advice!

[@JS-wz3km]

I'm going to have to try this. Thanks Sean!

[@dperry90277]

Thank You!!! Very helpful, I am grateful

[@cmar6268]

Excellent explanation! Ty!

[@debbydhill]

Excellent!

[@_jbflickz]

This is amazing…. Thanks for sharing this knowledge. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

[@ianmorris2098]

Excellent video Sean, very helpful and informative. Much appreciated.

[@Toyrapy]

1. Your approach to white balance seems quite unusual and remarkable to me. Perhaps I'll give your method a try sometime. 2. Please correct me if I am mistaken, but as far as I recall, the smaller the number, the cooler the result. Therefore, I have doubts regarding your chart; for instance, the moon should have a smaller number than the tungsten light bulb (thus, the moon should be on the left at 3000K, and the tungsten should be on the right at 8000K). 3. Initially, I was astonished by how golden or yellowish my photographs appeared under tungsten light when I first acquired my camera. 4. However, upon experimenting with white balance, I became even more impressed by the myriad of colors and tones that emerged beneath that golden cast (though they still retained a nighttime ambiance). Since then, eliminating the yellowish tint has become my preferred approach to photography. 5. In all your examples of eyedropper white balance, I personally prefer the "AFTER" results (with the exception of your "Blue hour in Whitby," where I found the "BEFORE" version superior). 6. Ultimately, I believe it is the photographer's preference that holds significance. Personally, I favor "cooler" shots. In my experience, while warmer ones may initially appear attractive, cooler photos tend to endure and appeal more in the long run. 7. One might argue for staying true to what the eyes perceive, but photography's ability to manipulate colors and shades enables the photographer to recreate scenes with their own creative vision. This includes techniques such as cropping, adjusting shadows, lowering highlights, tweaking hue or saturation, as well as other adjustments like clarity or noise reduction. For some of us, fidelity to reality is not a strict requirement; rather, we embrace the opportunity to create images even more beautiful than reality itself. 8. I have no interest in manipulating photos by adding or removing objects, or altering proportions though. 9. Lastly, it's worth noting that only higher-end cameras can accurately reproduce the full spectrum of tungsten yellowish colors. Most others tend to capture a mere blob of yellowish or golden tint.

[@nolanwest6831]

That's the best explanation I've heard. Thank you for taking the time to make this video.

[@ChetanDodwad]

Thank you so much for sharing this.. Will be definitely trying it out soon. ❤❤❤🎉🎉

[@JoeJoe4P]

Thank you for this video. I learned something today!

[@wtr4397]

This is so helpful.

[@steveperryphoto431]

Excellent video!

[@srichter8192]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

[@chrisnaughton4743]

Well done. Thank you.

[@lxhk3595]

Will try it out. Thanks for sharing yr thoughts

[@pmkPE]

Excellent Information!

[@diegoabw]

Thank you Sean. This video is very useful for me.

[@doncristobal33]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing

[@luiskaj2434]

Brilliant video with a truly compelling argument - thank you for sharing!

[@doughuras5407]

Great video. Very informative. Thanks!

[@davidburton2294]

Great video Sean - simply and brilliantly explained!

[@nolannatashaTV]

Love this approach

[@bunglawas6856]

Eye and mind opener this, great work sean

[@FernandoSanchez-ln3um]

Brilliant explanation!

[@julio5prado]

Great video, thanks !

[@JamieNelson]

Thank you, Sean. Really helpful.

[@juergenritter4306]

very well explained, Sean. Thank you

[@Mateiseaqir]

thanks for very nice visual examples! made so much sense to me. helpful!

[@craftyrouze]

Thank you for a clear explanation

[@susandarby6607]

Fantastic video! I never thought of it this way, I learned so. Thank you!

[@laisandrade3006]

I have never thought about that! Thank you so much for this video! You are the best!❤

[@smooth111012]

Brilliant advice, thank you Sean

[@SkiwithMike]

Great video. Food for thought

[@kbstabs5982]

Really useful, Sean

[@SA-jr6ce]

You’re amazing ❤

[@ArmstrongLife]

Great video. Refreshing approach

[@sandrac.8651]

Thank you so much for this brilliant explanation

[@davidrodgers9641]

superb video, wonderful explanation. thank you.

[@Si88888]

Thanks Sean, this is something I was playing with and you have solidified it, really appreciate your videos!

[@grosema]

WoW I am going to try This , Thanks

[@sfenwick]

Incredibly helpful. Thank you Sean! Cheers from Chicago.

[@MsMusigirl]

That makes so much sense. I wish someone would have told me this sooner. Thank you for sharing!

[@mr_k4tz]

One of your best videos. Thanks for sharing

[@paullesliehutson5818]

A really useful and clear video for everyone Sean. Thank You.

[@RealBesty]

What a helpful video - I shall definitely try this for myself 👍

[@exer9009]

appreciate the explanation, i can say i understand white balance now. but the explanation with the paper at the beginning is in reverse. actually cool light is lower number and warmer light is higher number

[@hr5641]

Sean you never disappoint

[@MartinV.]

Great Video

[@willkron]

Sehr schön!

[@gabolujan3109]

This video is amazing

[@aleksanderiwuc1730]

Very interesting approach! Many thx for sharing :)!

[@witcheater]

Thank you. Good info :)

[@icyjaam]

Loved it

[@osemtv]

That was SO very useful, really clear and made me think about WB in a new way. Thank you

[@Mrus-jo1rh]

Excellent video

[@TommysVerden]

I needed to hear this! ❤

[@rmgibbs1861]

Thank you very much. Using your suggestions. Great description!

[@carmenb1059]

Wow! Great video! I never thought about WB that way - makes total sense. Thank you!

[@jaxytvids]

Another great video, Sean.

[@zi5351]

Thank you, Sean! Very interesting and informative video!

[@sheilafoster-hancock5687]

Very interesting explanation, thank you.

[@rogertebb1997]

Great video Sean. I will be trying this.

[@ebar45]

I found that this presentation very enlightening, thank you.

[@yaffulwoodpeckerpresents7784]

Interesting and thought provoking.

[@pablojcarranzafernandez4413]

So interesting… as always 🖤