I presume they mean set the white balance to tungsten so you'll see the effect of the blue gels: if you white balance manually in the blue light, the camera will just take out most of the blue.

Personally, most of the time I only use the tungsten or daylight balance settings: usually the only time I set the manual white balance is when I have some weird combination of lights or want to do an effect in camera (e.g. balancing on an orange light to make everything look blue). Otherwise you spend all your time setting up gels to give a particular look to a scene and wipe it out by white-balancing.

Thanks for this.

So if my camcorder is normalized to 3200 or tungsten then you're saying I should just leave it on auto white balance?

Ray

What's my name?
Bernardo! Bernardo.
You're damn right...

Also, Mark, is there anything wrong/unprofessional with setting up the shot with the light you think would look fine for the scene and either auto-white balancing or not?

In other words, can you just set it up to your eye and see what you think looks best when you're looking at it either on the set, through your camera or on the monitor?

Anyone?

Well, I never use auto white balance: outdoors it's sunlight, indoors it's tungsten, unless there's such a mix of light colors that I have to set it manually to get a decent compromise.

quote:

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Originally posted by airwalk331

Also, Mark, is there anything wrong/unprofessional with setting up the shot with the light you think would look fine for the scene and either auto-white balancing or not?

In other words, can you just set it up to your eye and see what you think looks best when you're looking at it either on the set, through your camera or on the monitor?

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I'm not sure I understand the question.

It's your movie. You can light it exactly the way you want.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)