How To Adjust Your Camcorder's White Balance

How do I adjust my camcorder's white balance?

One of the most important features on your camcorder is your white balance setting. It can be done in automatic and sometimes that's fine, but let's talk about manual white balance settings. You are probably going to see something on the side of your camera that looks like, maybe, a light bulb for indoor setting or a sun for outdoor setting. Chips, CCDs and CMOS sensors (the image sensor of a camcorder) don't see the sun, don't see light the same way we do. A camcorder outside tends to see sunlight as very bluish where inside, maybe under most lighting, it might see it as orangish. You have to make sure the camera understands where you are shooting so it can compensate for that. So, indoors, you might want to select a preset so that it will know you are shooting under indoor lighting and outdoors, outdoor lighting. Or, you can go manual, and manual is pretty important because in a lot of environments you find yourself with mixed lighting; maybe you're shooting over by a window so you've got some indoor light and some outdoor light all mixed in. That's where your manual switch would come in, and really to set your white balance setting in manual mode you just set up the camera in front of something white like a white T-shirt or maybe a white card if you happen to have one, or a white piece of paper. Fill the frame with as much white as you can reflecting the light conditions of the room, press the button, hold it, and it's going to lock in a colour temperature which is exactly what you need for those shooting environments.