BSA101: White Balance, Zebra, Peaking, Natural Density and Mics (Week 3)

White balance (WB)
The process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light.
There are 3 functions on the camera for White Balance. B, A and Preset.

B - Depending on when you unbox the camera, if the switch is at B, it has been set to auto. This can be changed in the settings. (Usually set to warm colour by pointing the camera on a light blue object and hitting the auto balance button)
A - Usually set to cool colour by pointing the camera on a white paper and having the white value above 90%.
Preset - Will usually be at 5600 K

Zebra 
Zebra patterning is a feature found on some prosumer and most professional video cameras to aid in correct exposure. When enabled, areas of the image over a certain threshold are filled with a striped or cross-hatch pattern. Often, two thresholds are available: 70% and 100%.


Peaking
a focusing aid in live preview or electronic viewfinders on digital cameras that places a white or coloured highlight on in-focus edges (contours) within an image using an edge detect filter.


Natural Density Filter (ND)
In photography and optics, a neutral-density filter, or ND filter, is a filter that reduces or modifies the intensity of all wavelengths, or colors, of light equally, giving no changes in hue of color rendition. It can be a colorless (clear) or grey filter.


Microphones
Pick up patterns.
Different mics has different pick up patterns. In this course, we have the choice of a cardioid or shotgun mic.

A cardioid mic is usually used for an interview where you won't get much background noise as compared to a shotgun mic. A shotgun mic is when you can pick up background noises, for example: If you're interviewing someone and there's an aircon sound running in the background, you'll hear the aircon as compared to the cardioid where you won't hear the aircon sound.

BUZZ TRACK
The buzz track, also known as atmos track (short for atmosphere) is where sound recordists record up to a minute silence at each location in the film. Obviously these tracks won't be completely silent, they will have the normal noise evident when the actors and crew aren’t there.