I'll tell you how it's done on the sony PD and VX series camcorders; I hope I'm not restating the basics for you Ken, but basically the idea of white balance is to tell the camera "In this light, at this time, THIS is what white is" and the camera adjusts color accordingly. So, you need a reference white. Typically this is a white card. You can also get fancy with blue and gray tinted cards but I stick with the $5 cards from B&H. If I leave one on a shoot, no big deal. The way I do it is, once lighting and / or the subject is set, I set the white card in position at or near where the subject is. In a corporate setting you would want to do all this before the talent comes in. Anyway, dial WB and exposure to the manual setting. I zoom into the card so that white is filling the frame, set exposure just so zebras are not showing, and press in on the WB menu wheel. It blinks a couple of times to indicate that it's working, then you are manually white balanced.

Be aware that if ANYTHING about the light changes, your wb is likely to be off.

As for what are the specific steps for your new camera, I don't know. The setting may be buried in a menu somewhere, hopefully they have made the function easy to get to.

Now, the above procedure may be impossible to execute in a run and gun situation. It's up to you to determine when you have to rely on either auto WB or one of the indoor / outdoor presets.

set exposure just so zebras are not showing,I have always wondered about what exposure to use because obviously if it is too "hot," then white balance won't work. My question is, would reducing the exposure by another 1-2 stops below the point where zebras disappear give you a more accurate balance?

Thanks David, John .. good points. I'm totally new to white-balancing, though I've read up on it.. I'll follow your tips; the books and instruction manual are kind of basic re their coverage, I was wondering if any tips to make sure to "get right" so that acquisition for Vegas goes smoothly and I can minimize my (now-frequent!) color correction efforts needed in post.

Sounds like white-balancing can do a lot to make the color saturation and balance levels correct, especially for my work, which is in this instance, a lot of greenscreen studio shoots. Thanks!

Regards,

Ken

John,

In that scenario are you using a white balance card? Also do you have a camera that allows you to choose between 100% zebra and another zebra level like 80%?

From my experience, as John said, most, if not all camera's will not white balance correctly, if the signal is too hot(lots of zebras). So stopping down to where the zebras are gone, should give you a good white balance, all other things being equal.

I'd say get out of the basement doing chroma key, and shoot some footage in a real scenic environment. You live in Colorado, don't you? Take advantage of it.

I'd take seeing a presentation with real creeks, meadows and mountains in the background over a virtual set any day. I think most others would too. Plus, there's less problems white balancing or worrying about about proper lighting for the keying.

Hey that's a very good idea, too - I've been spending too many years inside the house mostly, anyways... might as well take advantage of the scenery here.

Reminds me of my trip to Hawaii last December, I was able to get some killer shots on Kailua beach, with just my panasonic gs120 ... in fact they looked so good, me just on the beach in a chair talking at the camera w/surf in the background... they looked like I might've keyed them (!), they looked "too" perfect...

So I had to shoot extra "establishing" wide angle footage, to prove I was really there, eg me walking in from the ocean, and walking down the beach, to sit down, then talk to the camera. That was an eye-opener, eg the footage looked so good it looked fake, so I had to fix it by shooting establishing shots... that's a great issue to deal with. Good point re Colorado footage, too - will do.. I live near Pike's Peak here in Col. Springs and it's beautiful scenery, and near Aspen. Thanks!

-ken