Manual white balance when one man band?

[Jeff Cook]

I am used to taking a photo of my white or grey card with my 6d. However, with the C100 it is pretty difficult to swing your arm around to the front and still press the white balance button. I tried assigning a button in the back portion of the camera but it doesn't allow it. How do you guys get around this when you want to manually white balance off a card?

[Mike Watson]

Production guys are more picky about white balance surfaces, but when I was a news guy we'd white balance off anything. I can always find a white car, a white shirt, a piece of paper on a desk, whatever.

[Oren Arieli]

How about a white-balance lens cap like this? Mennon 37mm White Balance Lens Cap | eBay

Just make sure that your camera is pointed towards your predominant light source, which might not be the same direction it's gonig to be shooting.

[Jeff Cook]

When I was in news I would have the reporter hold up paper. If I was alone I would even find myself white balancing off the concrete...yes it works! However when I am shooting a wedding I am going to need to white balance fast and need to know how with this C100 manually that is.

[Brian Drysdale]

Given the strange lighting you can get at some venues these days, you may have to experiment to find the right white balance. There are table cloths etc that can be used to grab one, but it can come down to trying different white balances to give one that best matches how the room looks to the eye and gives a good looking flesh tone (although they may not be the test chart type skin tone), You should store this if moving to different locations.

[Jim Andrada]

I guess you could set the camera on something for a minute and balance to the card, but if you work the same venues, probably best to store some presets that you get from experience. And shoot in Cinema mode and balance in post - this might be where an external recorder might help - they've gotten pretty small these days.

The problem with the awful mix that's common today is that the color balance will be different 20 feet away than it is where you are, so holding the card won't work - unless you have a long selfie stick:<)).

[Jody Arnott]

For doco/run and gun work I don't bother with a white balance card. I only use one if I'm doing a sit down interview. Any other time, any old white surface will do and I've never had an issue.

You're right though, the manual white balance button on the C100 is in an annoying place.

[Dan Brockett]

Many of us have found with the Canon EOS cameras, doing an ABB each and every time is more important than getting the perfect white balance. The Canons can do weird things to your colors and contrast if you fail to ABB for each shoot. I usually WB off of a white Flexfill isue for fill light for interviews or a piece of paper and I move the camera near enough to it to fill up the frame. No biggie, takes just a couple of seconds.

[Alex Harper]

There's is no time to set white balance with a card when you're in a run/gun situation. If you have time ask someone to hold the card otherwise learn your kelvin settings which is pretty straight forward. For wedding receptions with LED/Florescent lights don't under estimate the power of auto white balance, auto sometimes does an amazing job at eliminating the green cast from these light sources for everything else there is kelvin.

[Jeff Cook]

Does the auto white balance work well under several different lights sources? I have tried it with some sun coming into the room with tungsten and the color was off. I had to use my card and get a manual setting.

[Alex Harper]

Nope auto only works sometimes to eliminate the green cast from LED/Florescent, use with caution but don't rule it out. Mixed lighting 3900-4500K work well. The card will always be the best.

[Michael Silverman]

I've found that the C100's auto white balance has more issues than other cameras I've used. The auto white balance on my 70D works great in almost every situation, but on my C100 it tends to be very unpredictable. I've noticed that if I'm on a Kelvin setting of 3000 for instance, then walk into a room with lots of daylight, if I switch to auto white balance it will often show the color temperature around 3000 or 3100 right after I switch. It will then often take up to a minute before it slowly works its way up to around 5600 which is way too much time to sit and wait. Sometimes it will happen very quickly but other times it takes 30-60 seconds. I own two C100s and both of them do the same thing. I actually sent one of them into Canon because I thought something was wrong with it and they sent it back to me and said everything checked out fine.

With my 70D it takes about a second for it to adjust to the correct color temperature, and my Panasonic HMC150 takes about 1.5 seconds. So for whatever reason I've found the C100's auto white balance to be very poor and have just stopped using it. It's not a huge deal because I've gotten pretty good at setting the white balance by adjusting the Kelvin temperature, but it would be nice to have a reliable auto white balance.

[Dan Brockett]

Pros do not use AWB because AWB is constantly changing by reinterpreting what white is. I have seen videos where the skin tones are a moving target, it looks really bad. Get an accurate monitor and use your eyes, set a manual white balance, it's not that difficult. We all know that tungsten is 3200k, office fluorescent are 4300k and daylight is 5,500 to 8k, depending on time of day. Dial it in manually and get it into the neighborhood of correct, shoot something white and black and you should be GTG with color correction. Yes, mixed lighting can be tricky so bias toward your skin tones. If the people look good, a lot of background and foreground weird colors are forgiven. If the people look green, blue or red, that just looks wrong to anyone.