What is "white balance" and how does it affect my camcorder's picture?

What is "white balance" and how does it affect my camcorder's picture?

Tim Smith (Camcorder Training Specialist) gives expert video advice on: How do I record on my camcorder?; What is the "iris" of a camcorder?; How do I adjust my camcorder's white balance? and more...

White balance is something you need to use on a regular basis because your lighting temperatures change depending on the environment you're in. And by temperature, I mean the color of the light. Shooting indoors under a florescent tends to give you one type of color but outdoors you get a different type of color. You need consistent accurate color and that's done by setting a manual white balance. What you're telling the camera is what white is, that's why we call it white balance. The camera will already know, based on the design of the camera, what black is, which will give you the entire color spectrum. So, you set up your white balance by getting into the environment that you're going to shoot in, set up something white, look for anything from a white card to a white t-shirt, fill the frame as much as you can with white, lock that color temperature in by pressing the button on the camera and now the camera understands the entire color spectrum under the type of lighting that you're shooting in.