"White Balance"
WHAT IS IT?
White Balance is the adjustment of a video camera or display so
that it shows white parts of the picture with no colour tint. Our eyes
always seem to see white things as white regardless of the lighting but
this is a very clever trick of the eye and brain which adapt to the changing
colour of light automatically. Without correction, video cameras would show
the colour as it truly is i.e. bluish in sunlight and reddish in normal
room lighting. All domestic camcorders have automatic white balance these
days but sometimes it doesn't give exactly the right result. Many simply
switch between a fixed "sun" setting and a fixed "indoor" setting.
Even this can go wrong, especially at sunset when the camcorder might
think it is indoors and remove the redness, destroying the effect, much
to your annoyance. Fluorescent lights can fool the white balance system,
leaving a greenish tinge which makes people look ill. So unless you have
a manual white balance control and always use it carefully on every
occasion, as instructed, you will find many of your shots less than perfect.
Of course if you are using several camcorders to record an event then colour
matching is even more important or colours will change as you edit between
the different video sources - a really annoying effect.
Commercial video productions also sometimes have colour
defects which the Home Cinema owner finds unacceptable.
HOW CAN I CORRECT IT?
This is where the ACE's WHITE BALANCE controls come in. With independent
controls for Red, Green and Blue levels the ACE allows you to adjust the
colour of the white parts of the picture until they are neutral and not
tinted. At the same time most of the other colour errors will come right,
especially on the ACE which corrects white balance in a more sophisticated
way than some other units. The ACE also has one extra control
over other units on the market which is vital for accurate correction:
The COLOUR
BALANCE control.
This allows you to change the balance of reds and blues in the
picture and is especially useful in achieving the correct skin colour,
something not always perfect even with the correct White Balance. Simple isn't it!
Videomakers who buy the ACE primarily for its White Balance correction
include those with very simple systems right up to those with digital camcorders
and computer editing systems, the latter because it takes too long to do
white balance correction on large sections of source material on a computer.
The ACE allows adjustments to be made quickly on all the source material.
Home Cinema owners use the ACE during viewing to correct colour faults
for perfect colour reproduction under all conditions.
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