White Balance & Shooting In Raw

In the days gone by, we had a choice of two types of films: Daylight balanced and Artificial-light balanced.

- Rohinton Mehta

As the name suggests, daylight-balanced films were meant for using in the daytime while artificial-light films were meant to be used under the illumination of tungsten bulbs. But here was the problem — daylight is from the time the day begins, till it ends. As the day progresses, daylight takes on different hues. So for which time of the day was the daylight-balanced film most appropriate to use? Daylight-balanced films gave the most true-to-life colours when used when the light was ‘neutral’ (white) – approximately from, say, 10 am to 4 pm in our part of the world and on a sunny day. At other times, photographers had to use ‘filters’ to correct for a particular colour of the available light. For example, when photographing a lady in white dress under the shade of trees, the white dress would turn slightly green due to the reflection of the green colour from the trees. Hence a magenta (opposite of green) filter had to be placed in front of the lens to correct for the green hues.