White balance only exists in digital photography?


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Ding Shan Ben

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May 6, 2005
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For film users, they dun have to decide which white balance they going to use right???

But for digital users, we have to decide on the WB right???

If it is true, why film users no need???

Then film better right since they have one less factor to consider.

(I was told cannot post stupid things, Hope that this is not and it is a geninue question)
 

Ding Shan Ben said:
For film users, they dun have to decide which white balance they going to use right???

But for digital users, we have to decide on the WB right???

If it is true, why film users no need???

Then film better right since they have one less factor to consider.

(I was told cannot post stupid things, Hope that this is not and it is a geninue question)

lolx, this is not a stupid qn la...
i'm not too sure on e exact details,
(edit - looks like i'm wrong.. hehe)

lets wait for someone to explain a bit more details.. i quite curious too..
 

Film is manufactured with only one light temperature quality. This "standard" varies among manufacturers, but the aim is to produce natural colours under mid day lighting conditions. So, the regular film that we purchase (Fuji Superia, Kodak Max etc etc) all have a white balance of around 5500 degrees Kelvin.

Special film like Tungsten Film is used when we're shooting in extreme cases where almost all the lightsources are tungsten. What we get in prints is the end product after the printer has gone through the negatives in the printing machine. Shooting in tungsten lighting with daylight film (regular film) is fine, since the tungsten effect can be compensated for to a great extent.
 

MOST color negatives and transparencies are "daylight" balanced with the exception of a few professional film which can be tungsten balanced. If a given scene i.e. Cloudy afternoon is cooler than the color temperature that the film is designed for, you'll need a warming filter to balance it till the recommended "daylight" temperature. Likewise, this is the true for a scene warmer than daylight i.e. tungsten, you'll use a cooling filter.

Another thing to note is that in order to balance the color temp of flash lighting and ambience light, you need to fit color gels onto the flash head.
 

So can I use daylight and cloudy WB for indoor shoot and it will still turnout as warm as film?
 

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