? about white balance
 

Today I was using my xha1 to film some red flowers that were against a white background. All of a sudden the entire background was a shade of red. After about 30 seconds it went back to normal. DOes this have something to do with the white balance? I keep the camera on auto whit balance because I'm not sure when or how to use the feature. Any thoughts?

It seems that auto white balance should work if the lighting is consistent with no change.
Get a white balance card from a photo shop, and follow the XHA1 directions to manually balance. Should take care of the problem. I think most videographers manually white balance. Do an advanced search on this site for 'white balance' for the XHA1 and you'll get a lot of info.

I'd recommend learning about this feature. It's not complex or hard to do. The shooter just needs to remember to do it when the lighting changes. For example, going from indoors to outside or when clouds invade a previously sunny day.

The reasons I like manual white balancing is that it gives me control over the consistency of each shot. Also, since I often use multiple cameras at once, manually white balancing each camera at the same time helps insure that the images of each cam looks similar to the others. Saves caboodles of time in post.

WB can be a powerful creative tool as well. Manually setting the color temperature in the cam can give you that warm sunset or icy blue snow field you want. It's worth learning more about this.

? about Manual Mode
 

When I'm in Manual mode, do I still have the option of using the auto white balance feature or will the camera be expecting me to set it on my own? I'm really trying to understand when I need to white balance. I;ve searched the other threads but still cant nail it down.

Kevin,

I know you're new to the camera....

In laymans terms, when you white balance your camera, you are telling the camera what is white. It is done by pointing the camera at something that is white(full screen) and hit the white balance button with the selector on a or b. A plain piece of white paper will work. I use a 8X10 piece of framed painter's canvas that was in the garage. I perfer also not to focus when I white balance...just a preference.

White balancing to something other than white will give different results what Tripp was leading too. You can purchase white balance cards that come in different shades to accomplish this.

I was taping a friends caberet last night for her.....show was ready to start....oh crap, forgot to white balance....I shifted to "K" and dialed in something close because none of my saved presets would have been remotely close.

Hope this helps
Michael

Kevin,
Tripp addressed this in his reply to you on your "white balance" thread.

If you have any further questions concerning white balance, recommend you add to your white balance thread, regardless of what mode instead of creating a new one.

hope this helps ya,
Michael

Auto White Balance is always available no matter which shooting mode you're in. It's governed by the little AWB slide switch on the bottom left side of the camera. The only program mode that has a direct effect on AWB is the Easy / Green Box mode. In that mode, AWB is always on, even if the AWB slide switch is set to off. Page 54 of the owner's manual has a chart which shows the various functions that are or are not available in each of the program modes.

I've now merged those two threads, due to their similarities.

For all my previous advocacy of A mode in another thread we shared, Kevin, I always manually white balance in any situtation where there is an abnormal distribution of color, like a predominant saturated color, or an unusual or mixed light source. AWB appears to try to average out the colors in the scene and if a color dominates, it will try to compensate for it.

I did an interview once with a man sitting in front of a wall painted a bilious yellow-orange --- and looked with horror at the clip as the white balance over a period of a minute slid slowly from normal to a very odd color as the AWB apparently tried to neutralize the overall color....took some very intense keyframing of Final Cut's color controls to try to keep the color constant as it changed over the course of the clip....I always carry a reporter's notebook (pocket-sized spiral bound thing we are issued) so I always have a clean white to focus on... / Battle Vaughan /miamiherald.com video team

Presets
 

Just food for thought...if you want a film look especially in 24f mode I use the presets and stay with them for the whole shoot. Think about it when using a arriflex or any other film camera the film is either daylight or tungston balanced. Using warm or cold lighting and reflectors is how you get a cinematic color exposure. If we are doing a multicam tv type production in a controlled enviromrnt then we color balance. Also make sure you use a balance card as there are at least 5000 shades of white.

Wynn B