White Balance

[Autumn]

I saw this article today on "White balance":-

http://help.cnet.com/ipod/9602-12576_39-0.html?messageID=2505127&tag=nl.e410

What do other people do?

Use automatic?

Use your camera's presets?

Use a grey card? (I still have one I received free with Digital Camera magazine, which I have never used.)

Or just us software to adjust.

[Barr1e]

Re: White Balance

I have of late shot on automatic only because I use at three different camera bags and keep forgetting to take my Expodisc with me (choosing a bag without the disc in). I find the disc most useful now that I have the camera set up to undertake the wb settings at the touch of the camera button.

Regards. Barr1e

[Autumn]

Re: White Balance

... ... now that I have the camera set up to undertake the wb settings at the touch of the camera button.

Regards. Barr1e

I don't think I have that facility on my cameras. They are not SLR's just Prosumer and Bridge cameras.

[Ian]

Re: White Balance

I don't think I have that facility on my cameras. They are not SLR's just Prosumer and Bridge cameras.

One touch white balance is a common feature on mid-high end compacts and most bridge cameras. This is where you point the camera at a neutral subject reflecting the ambient light - a white piece of paper or a grey card will do.

Barr1e's ExpoDisc replaces the requirement for a card or piece of paper as it diffuses incoming light at the end of the lens.

Personally, I shoot RAW if I can and when I need to, I adjust in RAW. It's more difficult to adjust WB in a JPEG. Camera auto white balance is pretty reliable these days, though. Only extreme conditions usually fox AWB.

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: White Balance

I saw this article today on "White balance":-

http://help.cnet.com/ipod/9602-12576_39-0.html?messageID=2505127&tag=nl.e410

What do other people do?

Use automatic?

Use your camera's presets?

Use a grey card? (I still have one I received free with Digital Camera magazine, which I have never used.)

Or just us software to adjust.

I have to admit that I mostly use Auto WB. Shooting in daylight usually doesn't create any problems with WB. Its shooting indoors that can create problems. However, I always shoot in RAW and this does help with adjustments later. Using mixed lighting creates a problem, for example, shooting indoors with the ambient lighting usually gives a colour caste, but if you introduce some flash, the foreground can be OK but the background still has the colour caste due to the flash not affecting it. Therefore I often will switch the flash off alltogether and just use ambient light. The WB can then be corrected easily in your RAW software.

Here are a couple of shots I took recently on a job. I've used them in another thread to do with using Lightroom, but they illustrate what I'm on about here. The first version is simply using ambient light on Auto WB. Then after using the WB picker tool in Lightroom the WB is corrected. Though these were shot in Raw, I'm pretty sure that the same could be achieved in LR if they had been shot as jpegs.

I took a whole series of shots under the same conditions and was able to adjust them all in one batch by using the Sync facility in LR. Shot at ISO 1600 incidentally.

[rogleale]

Re: White Balance

Hi Audrey,

Like the others I usually shoot in raw using the auto WB, but there are two times when I don't use the auto setting. Just my personal ideas.

One is for flash when I use the flash setting because I find it normally makes any subsequent adjustment easier. The other time is when I shoot a panorama, when I set it to a setting which most closely matches the ambient light. eg sunny or cloudy. This is because on auto the camera may change WB between frames, complicating the stitching.

The one from Quimper I have attached had to be taken in auto, but what a job I had getting half-way decent colours! A mix of flourescent, tungsten, and daylight, and all because it's my favourite sort of shop!



Roger

[StuartR]

Re: White Balance

it's my favourite sort of shop!
Roger

With you on that one Roger Although as a diabetic I don't get to sample the goods that often


I shoot RAW exclusively now so AWB it is and I adjust during RAW conversion if required. To be honest, it's pretty rare I need to adjust it - usually only in the event of significant mixed lighting in an image.

[Ian]

Re: White Balance

I have to admit that I mostly use Auto WB. Shooting in daylight usually doesn't create any problems with WB. Its shooting indoors that can create problems. However, I always shoot in RAW and this does help with adjustments later. Using mixed lighting creates a problem, for example, shooting indoors with the ambient lighting usually gives a colour caste, but if you introduce some flash, the foreground can be OK but the background still has the colour caste due to the flash not affecting it. Therefore I often will switch the flash off alltogether and just use ambient light. The WB can then be corrected easily in your RAW software.

Here are a couple of shots I took recently on a job. I've used them in another thread to do with using Lightroom, but they illustrate what I'm on about here. The first version is simply using ambient light on Auto WB. Then after using the WB picker tool in Lightroom the WB is corrected. Though these were shot in Raw, I'm pretty sure that the same could be achieved in LR if they had been shot as jpegs.

I took a whole series of shots under the same conditions and was able to adjust them all in one batch by using the Sync facility in LR. Shot at ISO 1600 incidentally.

I mentioned previously that it's more difficult to adjust WB in JPEGs compared to RAW. The reason is this: when adjusting in RAW you are changing the RGB pixel values at the lowest level, before they have been merged to create 'artificial' pixels colours in the final image, which is what you have with a JPEG. Although you can adjust colour channels individually in JPEGs, the pixel colours you are addressing will not always represent the white balance you are targeting.

I'll try to dig out an example...

Ian

[Ian]

Re: White Balance

I hope that the following images demonstrate my point about the superiority of adjusting white balance using a RAW file compared to adjusting a JPEG. Click on each image to see a technical explanation of how each one was adjusted (referring to other threads in high ISO shooting, these were shot at ISO 3200!):

JPEG original

WB adjusted in JPEG

WB adjusted from RAW file

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: White Balance

OK I have to agree with what you say. I had a go with a Raw and JPEG version of the same picture in Lightroom and the difference is just amazing. It is so much easier to adjust the RAW file. Doing the same thing to a JPEG simply does not give anywhere near the same result. With a bit of messing about you can get an approximation but its not as good.

[Autumn]

Re: White Balance

Interesting comparision Ian an Stephen.

I sometime shoot in RAW but it takes a longer time to save between shots so I have gone back to High Resolution JPG.

I usually use auto and adjust my WB in Lightroom. I haven't yet downloaded Lightroom 2.

It is interesting to hear what other people do re WB.

[Ian]

Re: White Balance

Interesting comparision Ian an Stephen.

I sometime shoot in RAW but it takes a longer time to save between shots so I have gone back to High Resolution JPG.

I usually use auto and adjust my WB in Lightroom. I haven't yet downloaded Lightroom 2.

It is interesting to hear what other people do re WB.

Just to make it clear, it's not 'Lightroom' that makes the difference, but the choice between RAW and JPEG.

Audrey, if I may say so, you are really quite talented a photographer and I think you deserve a camera that will shoot RAW at normal speeds - which most DSLRs do...

Ian

[Ian]

Re: White Balance

Just got home and viewed my pix on Julia's laptop (admittedly overdue for maintenance calibration of the screen) but the example pix I have posted in this thread are surprisingly dark, which suggests that the excessive brightness of my new monitor that I mentioned has resulted in a choice of picture that was too dark to start with!

Or is it just Julia's laptop? Are the pictures too dark?

Ian

[Stephen]

Re: White Balance

Just got home and viewed my pix on Julia's laptop (admittedly overdue for maintenance calibration of the screen) but the example pix I have posted in this thread are surprisingly dark, which suggests that the excessive brightness of my new monitor that I mentioned has resulted in a choice of picture that was too dark to start with!

Or is it just Julia's laptop? Are the pictures too dark?

Ian

For what its worth, I think the pics look OK bearing in mind there is a fair bit of shadow in the pics

[Autumn]

Re: White Balance

Just to make it clear, it's not 'Lightroom' that makes the difference, but the choice between RAW and JPEG.

Audrey, if I may say so, you are really quite talented a photographer and I think you deserve a camera that will shoot RAW at normal speeds - which most DSLRs do...

Ian