White Balance Question
- This topic has 14 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated Aug 3, 2008 at 9:05 pm by
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So – I’m curious how folks are setting their WB. Are you generally shooting a grey and white card in the series before you start, playing with temp settings, or shooting on auto?
I shoot RAW 100% of the time and use AWB.
Usually the body is pretty good at determining WB, but occasionally its way off.
If I *want* a true or close to “real” WB, typically what I do is use the eyedropper WB tool and click on that portion of my image thats either white (or should be white) or better yet, a point thats as close to nuetral grey as I can.
Done.
*********There are 3rd party plug ins available that somehow allow you imbed a grey card in your image ( I guess an insert) which you then click on, which sets the grey point and your onverter uses to establish “true” WB…Dunno for sure, never tried them…just know it exist.
I could probably find the link if you like.Most often though as a “nature/wildlife/outdoors photogrpaher you will want or appreciate the ability to set the “tone” of your image yourself in post.
Theres no hard and fast rule that your final image *has* to be the true/real WB. Its kind of like “exposures”. Theres a “proper” exposure and then theres what you want the exposure to be.
In it’s purest sense it means having the power to warm or cool the image away from the WB.
Photpgraphy is subjective and whos to say if any given image won’t benefit by warmed/cooled by 50 or 500 Kelvin degrees.Of coarse you always run the risk of “overdoing” it and creating a colour cast but….
even then sometimes a colour cast can add to the mood of an image rather than detract.Another one of my vacation shots.
I cooled this if memory serves me right by 150pts.
Doing so helped the blues present in the sky and water.So John, you’re shooting on auto WB and then correcting in PS post.
Yep…if its needs correcting (often it doesnt) or “manipulating” if I want to cool/warm the image. Not sure which converter you use but I much prefer converters that allow you adjust the WB via a slider that uses “Kelvin” (sp?) degrees vs those that have preset daylight/tungsten/cloud/sunlight/etc. One the control is infinately finer but its also visual vis a vie a colour graph (hard to describe).
if you have an image that has a yellow/Golden colour cast its “warm”. Think morning sunlight on someones face, or
That was shot within 15 minutes of the sun breaking the horizon in the latter part of winter (March or early April). If I recall the WB per the Kelvin scale was around 6,500 to 6,800..I warmed it a hair maybe boosting it another 100pts.Conversely you’d want to cool it if its too warm to your taste.
Generally don’t like to reply to my own but I thought of something I wanted to add.
Most raw converters whether they use preset Cloud/sun/xxx or a Kelvin Scale also have 1 or 3 eye dropper tools. If its just 1 thats typically for setting the grey point. If all 3 theres one for black/grey/white.
Using the above WT image. Had the camera been way off with the WB and i wanted to “set/correct” it. Id have chosen the “white” eye dropper and clicked on a part of the image that I knew to be “white”
In this case its tail.Based on that, the software would set the WB and voila…My white is white.
On area where I often have to correct WB is when shooting my girls indoor sports. Skin tones look like crap and white jerseys are rarely white. Rather than trust to my eye, I choose either a white or black eye dropped and click on the appropriate part of the image that I know to be black or white.
I specifically recal haveing to do that with most of these shots.They had god awful skin tones and cast……originally
Not perfect but the skin tones are better and the white Jerseys are whiter 🙂
I can’t stand auto WB from any camera I’ve tried – they always look off.
I set a manual temp and maybe change the green/magenta a little in post with mixed lighting, but that’s all.
On some hard light situations a grey card can help !A good thing about working in manual is that you have to learn to see the color of the light to work quickly – it’s a great skill to have on the job.
It also saves a lot of post work.
Like John I only shoot raws..
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
AWB can bounce around but under mixed lighting its amazing. If you can get in the habit of doing it shoot a Macbeth colorchecker when you begin shooting a session and when the lighting changes shoot it again. You can batch apply settings to groups of files shot under similar conditions. They make a mini colorchecker which is handy. Quite a few people use ExpoDisc and get good results too.
http://www.xrite.com/product_overview.aspx?ID=944
http://www.expodisc.com/tips/I use the mini one – it gives you a good idea of where the light is at and is nice for checking in post.
On studio or big location shoots I do a frame of it after setting a manual WB and then check ir both on screen and in camera.
It’s a great tool.
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
Thanks guys for all the great responses. I’m going to take each of these techniques out this week and the next and see which one fits me. Truly appreciate it, I’m sure this will help me take better pictures.
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Every setup I do in studio starts with a parameter setting of the Macbeth card in my capture program and I use those setting for all the shots under them same lighting. It save a ton of time in post.
Hoping I’m missing something simple and one of you can explain it or pointout what I’m missing :). I can see the value of such items and steps when your in a controlled enviroment as in a studio or set and have often given alot of thought to buying them. But everytime I think about buying a grey card or incident meter or even something like the above I can’t help but think it has the potential to be…going to use a strong word for lack of better…..ruining or counter productive.
When shooting in the outdoors, light values are constantly changing. Whether its 5 minutes in elapsed sunrise or perhaps the simplest analogy is quite simply the sun peeking out from behind a cloud, or say an angler or deer moving from sunlight into shade cast by a tree.
So in the end you could likely end up spending more time correcting.
I’ve given alot of thought t picking up a grey card/expodisc and every time Im about to pull the trigger I end up passing for fear that the lack of control in the outdoors would perhaps lead to more missed or wrong settings. The only option I aware of, is toThose shots of the card above are done in a church where I had to shoot a christening for a big client of mine..
(yes, he hosed me into doing it for a favor ;))The first is looking down towards the floor and checking the light from above and the second is near some big windows where a lot of daylight was facing a very well lit back wall.
You can see all the warm lights out of focus in the background.What the the card did was give me a good starting point for all the shots in the situation no matter what direction I was shooting.
To find a middle ground, where I can shoot at will and only end up with small corrections if any at all.That’s what I use it for – and I’ve found the more I use it the better I get a reading the light without it or a grey card.
That’s the way it worked in the stone ages when we shot film and had to filter.
You had to have an idea what color the light was in the first place.Where am I going with this ?
(no really, help ! ;D)You need to see the basic light when shooting outdoors and learn to make changes when the light changes.
Say for example in open sun your at 5600 (depending on camera) and if it goes light cloud 6000 or in heavy overcast you might like the look of 7500.
There will be times when the light changes too fast and you might use auto or just do a shed load of corrections in post.If you play around with it enough you will get very fast at the changes and IMHO, get much better raws to work with.
If the light isn’t changing you will have time to much about with a grey card or color chart.
The color temp setting on my cameras is now in a very easy to reach custom menu and I can change it in a couple seconds.
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
Thanks David.
Still unsure about how much real use it would be “in the field” so to speak. Thats a product of the amount of style/type of photography I do the most, where the subject matter is often fluid and the lighting can change dramatically and fast. To me it would seem to be a case of consistant lighting vs inconsistant.
However, a tool is a tool and the more we’re familiar with and comfortable using, knowing when and how to use them only leads to better results. If nothing else,as you said it becomes a training aid to recognise different qualities of light.
Next up for another day/thread incident meters 🙂
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