White Balance

[Hairy Cornflake]

What is, if there is a best method, to set the white balance in the camera or, as I have been doing correcting in post processing?

[K12beano]

Best: Custom White balance each new situation using an 18% grey card. Keep a shot of the 18% grey card as well as using it for custom setting. Belt... and braces.

Next nearest: how good is your body supposed to be at Auto WB? Just use custom in "difficult" cases.

[JJM]

Do you shoot in raw?

It gives you so much freedom when pp'ing your pics.

[Hairy Cornflake]

Hi Both

I have a Canon 500D and I shoot in raw and post process in Lightroom.

The majority of the photographs I take are in daylight, without a flash. The camera is left on auto WB setting. The colour is blue as shot, after choosing daylight or cloudy setting in LR more reds are added and the pictures become warmer. I do not have grey cards to set a custom WB.

[SamHH]

I'd just set the camera to auto white balance and then if it doesn't look right, fiddle about in Lightroom. Much easier than setting a custom white balance every time the light changes.

[LongQ]

Hairy Cornflake said:

Hi Both

I have a Canon 500D and I shoot in raw and post process in Lightroom.

The majority of the photographs I take are in daylight, without a flash. The camera is left on auto WB setting. The colour is blue as shot, after choosing daylight or cloudy setting in LR more reds are added and the pictures become warmer. I do not have grey cards to set a custom WB.

Any filters on the lens?

Is your monitor/screen/TV/whatever colour calibrated?

[Simpo Two]

Hairy Cornflake said:

What is, if there is a best method, to set the white balance in the camera or, as I have been doing correcting in post processing?

I like to think that by shooting RAW one can 'set' the WB during processing, not 'correct' it

I use AutoWB and tweak as required in processing. Sometimes I use the dropper on a white or neutral area, at other times by eye. It all depends on the shot.

[LongQ]

What Simpo said - but you need to know whether your viewing device is at least reasonably close to accurate and that your viewing (and editing) environment is not skewing things as conditions change.

If something is not right and you can't easily do anything about it you have to work out how to compromise to get 'good enough'.

[dave-therave]

K12beano said:

Best: Custom White balance each new situation using an 18% grey card. Keep a shot of the 18% grey card as well as using it for custom setting. Belt... and braces.

This is the proper way, I never bother though. I tend to do it by sight in photoshop.

[paul911]

I use custom white balance in camera when adding the ND110 (10 stop) or a cheapo 3 stopper, as both ND’s have a weird pink / magenta cast to them. And if not using the ND then set the WB to cloudy, sun ect. The reason I do it in camera is I hate doing the PP work, and you can see in camera the correct coloured image.

[Hairy Cornflake]

LongQ said:

Hairy Cornflake said:

Hi Both

I have a Canon 500D and I shoot in raw and post process in Lightroom.

The majority of the photographs I take are in daylight, without a flash. The camera is left on auto WB setting. The colour is blue as shot, after choosing daylight or cloudy setting in LR more reds are added and the pictures become warmer. I do not have grey cards to set a custom WB.

Any filters on the lens?

Is your monitor/screen/TV/whatever colour calibrated?

No filters, the screen has not been calibrated for a month or two but is not far off.

Anyway regardless of calibration or not, there is still a change to the colour of the photograph as applied by Lightroom when changing from as shot to say daylight.

[LongQ]

Hairy Cornflake said:

LongQ said:

Hairy Cornflake said:

Hi Both

I have a Canon 500D and I shoot in raw and post process in Lightroom.

The majority of the photographs I take are in daylight, without a flash. The camera is left on auto WB setting. The colour is blue as shot, after choosing daylight or cloudy setting in LR more reds are added and the pictures become warmer. I do not have grey cards to set a custom WB.

Any filters on the lens?

Is your monitor/screen/TV/whatever colour calibrated?

No filters, the screen has not been calibrated for a month or two but is not far off.

Good, that seems to eliminate some possible variables. Do the images show the same discrepancy on other monitors?

Hairy Cornflake said:

Anyway regardless of calibration or not, there is still a change to the colour of the photograph as applied by Lightroom when changing from as shot to say daylight.

No great surprise in that. LR (et al) will have a 'default' colour temperature setting for 'Daylight', 'cloudy', etc.

These may or may not be the same as the value set by the same WB settings in the camera and are more than likely to be different to what the camera has assessed as being the most appropriate colour temp value for the entire image that your asked it to take. In itself that value will be a compromise and may well change shot to shot even in a rapidly taken sequence. One day we may see a camera that offers calculated WB adjustments across the entire sensor but not yet, at least at the consumer level.

I just checked good old "Cambridge in Colour" and sure enough there is a tutorial discussing WB matters.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-b...

Does that help resolve a few puzzles?

It is possible, I suppose, that for some reason the camera is selecting a poor WB value. You could check that using a neutral 18% grey card and running some tests. If you set the camera to it's preset WB settings and then check the reported colour temp values in LR (Or wherever) are shots different (both visually and by reported colour temp.) by a significant amount when the embedded JPG's from the RAW files are viewed alongside the interpeted and converted RAW files created by LR?

It's a question of trying to assess if you have a problem with the camera, and if so how much of a problem. Such a test would not be conclusive but may at least help you to decide what course of action to take.

[Hairy Cornflake]

Thanks LongQ

My photographs appear similar to the first two pictures in the article.

I now have an appreciation of what the whit balance is, but no idea why the as shot images with auto WB appear blueish and cold, but they are easily correctable in post processing.

Thanks to all for the comments and help.

[LongQ]

Hairy Cornflake said:

Thanks LongQ

My photographs appear similar to the first two pictures in the article.

I now have an appreciation of what the whit balance is, but no idea why the as shot images with auto WB appear blueish and cold, but they are easily correctable in post processing.

Thanks to all for the comments and help.

A tendency towards 'cool' rather than 'warm' is normal for most auto WB decisions in my persoanl experience. Sometimes and in some shooting situations that tendency is amplified.

If you were to shoot to jpg only you would be seriously compromised of course, as is pointed ut in the tutorial. The question for th camera is 'What can I use to decide where my white balance should be?' Sometimes and in some lights the data is misleading.

That said bear in mind that what you first see on screen for a RAW file will be the embedded jpg that will have used the camera's presets for jpg files to prepare it for presentation. Also the viewing screen, colbrated or not, can and likely will have a few anomalies in the colour balance that can lead to subtle or not so subtle distortion of colour balance at points in the colour range. More often than not this will involve blue (whereas the camera sensor may be struggling with Red/orange). Vast sums spent of pro level monitors can avoid such problems but that's a big committment. I tend to leave general colour adjustment out of the equation unless I really feel a need for it.

When you open a RAW for edit and amke changes the field should be re-calculated by the editor and you will then get the in-computer version rather than the in-camera jpg version. These can often ne different even if no actual edit (just displaying at a different size to the embedded jpeg default for example) has occurred. All of these things can be enough to cause puzzlement from time to time - or so I find when I am not paying full attention to the effect of what I am doing. Of course the great thing about working with RAW is that it's all recoverable. But you know that anyway.

That said there are some situations that prove extremely challenging. Very dark blue shiney things - like cars for example - in on bright sunny days can result in some extremely unhelpful colour balance problems as the camera has tried to adjust for the warm light temperature in a range of the colour spectrum and exposure spectrum that offers little scope for fine detail adjustments. Sometimes a strong blue shift would be welconme - but not for the entire image!

[stigmundfreud]

ditch light room and use DPP for processing the raw, the move over to lightroom

[Nocturnal]

You shouldn't really have to go through the effort of shooting in RAW (huge file sizes, long upload time) and then PP (long editing times) to sort something as relatively simple as white balance, especially in daylight.

If the auto setting isn't working (although it should - maybe a camera fault?), then either try a 'pre' (as sort of mentioned above, although the 18% grey card is for exposure metering, not white balance - you just need something white, you're effectively telling the camera ''this is white''. Most grey cards have a white side for this very reason, but you don't specifically need one, a blank sheet of paper or even a white shirt will do the same job. 'Pre' is particularly useful for shooting in discontinous spectrum lighting such as mercury vapour or sodium) or try altering the colour temperature itself. Mid-day daylight is generally 5400-5700K, so try 5500K, and bracket around it by eye until you get a colour you're happy with.

Whilst Post-processing is great, it should be used as a tool to enhance images, not correct them. It's better to get it right in-camera.

[Cabinet Enforcer]

Nocturnal said:

If the auto setting isn't working (although it should - maybe a camera fault?), then either try a 'pre' (as sort of mentioned above, although the 18% grey card is for exposure metering, not white balance - you just need something white, you're effectively telling the camera ''this is white''. Most grey cards have a white side for this very reason, but you don't specifically need one, a blank sheet of paper or even a white shirt will do the same job.

This is not correct, consider what would happen to the white balance if one or more channels of the "white" items you take the white balance off is blown, no way of telling as all are at 255. White balance has to come off neutral and some way away from white or black.

[andy-xr]

I've got an XRite thats useful in some cases, I've found lately though I just leave it on Auto WB and change it later in Lightroom if I want to

[Simpo Two]

I have to work quickly and in an infinitie number of lighting situations. There's no time to mess about setting WB manually. 'Excuse me Vicar, can you just hang on a bit while I mess around with some buttons...?'. Shoot RAW and set it afterwards when you have time and space to do it properly. RAW liberates you from the need to do it at the time of shooting, when you have enough things to worry about. That's my 4p anyway

[Whitefly Swatter]

i use one of these
http://www.rawworkflow.com/whibal/
even when shooting raw - it is easy to use takes one shot and using photoshop raw setting the white balance for a batch is easy
if the lighting changes take another pic of the whibal

thats my 6d worth