Get rid of the colour tinge in your photos

Notice the horrible yellowish tinge to everything...
But here, thanks to new, improved Persil automatic, your whites are whiter than white - uber-white!

How often have you taken photos or recorded video at a tournament, grading or other special event, only to find that the colour's are all tinged with orange, green, yellow or blue when you look at them on your computer or TV screen?

All gymnasiums and large public venues use artificial lights,;usually they are neon, incandescent, sodium, or halogen, and each of these lights produces a distinct colour caste which changes the colour of everything else in the room. It's really annoying, because although you can fix tainted images and footage with modern computer software such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Premiere, it can be hard and time-consuming to completely correct colour caste, and on video it's especially problematic.

Fortunately, it's an unbelievably easy problem to prevent, and all it takes is 30 seconds of preparation.

All modern cameras, and most camcorders have a white balance function. This is used to adjust the camera's colour settings to compensate for colour caste. The white balance function works by measuring the actual colour of a supposedly white surface, then adjusting the camera's electronics to compensate for any colour.

Most photographers would take along a a couple of sheets of thick white paper, but at a karate venue, there's no shortage of white objects to calibrate off.

All you need to do is set your camera's white balance function to manual, then find somebody with a clean gi, focus your camera on their back so that their back fills the entire viewfinder, and press the white balance set or read button. The camera will measure the image it sees and adjust all future pictures accordingly.Ensure that you are in an area of the room with good lighting. Also, just be careful that you choose someone with a true white gi because traditional Japanese gis and the new GKR UK heavyweights have a blue glow, and some others can have a faint red or yellow tint to them.

Just a word of warning; some cameras automatically reset the white balance whenever you turn the power fully off, or if the power is off for a certain amount of time. Just ensure that you know in advance how your camera behaves to avoid disappointment.