Setting Camara White Balance

[staffwalker]

I'm having problems with setting a custom white balance. I'm using a Canon PowerShot A70 and a homemade light box with various color inserts from off white to charcoal gray. Regardless of which one I use to set the white balance the background shows up as a very pale blue in the resulting photo. How does one get the pipe to photograph so the background paper does not show through? I'm using two 75W daylight lamps, the position of the two appear to have no effect. bob gilbert

[eric]

As I understand it, the white balance is more to compensate for different lighting, rather than to make something that isn't white appear white. If you move the color such that you are switching where true white is, all other colors will be off. That said, I think you need a white background. I've had good luck in that regard with simple printer or copier paper. I certainly am not an expert, however, so if I'm wrong hopefully someone will enlighten us.

[KurtHuhn]

Custom white balance (which I see the A70 has) is set by photographing a white or neutral gray card, then use that as the custom white balance reference.

What I do, when I want to use a custom white balance, is turn on the lights in my photo tent and let them come up to temperature and brightness. Then stick a piece of plain bright white copy paper in there and snap a photo. Then go into my camera menus (I have a Canon 300D) and set that picture as the custom white balance. From there on out, don't change anything in the light box (background, lights, position, other lights in the room, etc) until you're finished.

For custom white balance to really work well, you should limit all ambient light to what's in the photography tent (aka light box), and turn off all other light sources - draw the blinds, shut off the overheads, etc. Also, it's ideal if you set the custom white balance each time you plan on doing a photo session. That way you account for any forgotten variables, including slight variation in light cast by your bulbs.