The Nasty Yellow

So, as my dentist would be more than happy to tell you, caffeine-rich beverages like tea and coffee are also really, really good at leaving a yellow stain on things. My mother would be more than happy to tell you how awful it is for countertops, too (usually right after yelling at me to go find a paper towel and WIPE THAT UP!). But, you know, at this point I’m used to the fact that all of my purportedly white counters have a vague yellow brown tint. I don’t feel the same way at all about my photographs.

Now, first, let’s get my stance on white balance out there. I think an accurate white balance is one that recreates how I perceived the light at the time, because, let’s be honest, we very rarely get actual white light. But, there are occasions when getting an accurate white balance becomes important (in my case this is usually shooting in the absolutely awful dim mixed lighting of my friend’s metal concerts).

Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t tend to carry around a sheet of white paper to take an incident reading off of for my custom white balance setting. This is where my coffee addiction becomes a saving grace. It turns out coffee filters (the bleached kind, sorry eco-warriors) are great for setting white balance.

How? Just strap one of those bad-boys over your lens, point it at the light source, then do whatever jiggery-pokery your camera manual says you have to do in order to set a custom white balance. Voila! The coffee filter acts as a diffuser and a white instance all at once, and I generally get some pretty fabulous results from this.

It does, however, look a bit, ah, ‘low budget.’ If you’re looking to impress clients, I recommend a product called the ExpoDisc, which works very similarly but looks a whole lot more porfessional and comes in a variety of handy sizes.

Next time: Spilling Things! Or, Why Derek Likes Olympus Digital Cameras and Panasonic Camcorders.