Setting the White Balance on a Mini DV Camcorder

"Hi! My name is Paige. You can see my website at www.porchproductions.net. Today we’re talking about mini DV camcorders. Right now, we’re going to talk about white balancing, it’s extremely important. White balance is basically telling your camcorder to see what white is in the light that your camcorder is in. All of your mini DV camcorders will white balance. Refer to your operating manual to figure out how to do it, but the most important thing is to do it. I’m going to show you one that’s Panasonic; how to white balance. You want to turn your camcorder on. What you do is you have your subject or someone, which is basically the focus of your center of where you are shooting, hold up a white sheet of paper. If you’re shooting in a house maybe a white wall will work, anything like that. You want to zoom in on your paper until all you see is white such as that. You want to hold the paper in front of you and then depending on your camcorder, you want the white balance where it says to white balance. On this camcorder, it’s actually at the front. I just hold this button while my camcorder is zoomed in on a white piece of paper or wall. A lot of camcorders including Sony, tend to have white balance under the menu. Generally, the menu button is located around this part of the camcorder. Here is my menu button, so if I was shooting in a Sony or Canon I would push menu and then it will probably have a tag line for white balance there. Refer your operator’s manual, but the most important thing to know about white balancing is that you really want to do it because you want the best looking picture that you can, and that’s the way to ensure it."