Best way to set white balance?

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torque22

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So how do you set white balance, surely you don't leave it on Auto?
I have just bought a cheap £3 white cap to fit on my lens, but when you are out doors and the light changes all the time, does this not affect the WB.

what should be the order of events when taking a shot? is wb last first or what?

Or should I just do it in PS afterwards?
 
If you shoot in Raw no wb is assigned to the shot so it matters not - sort it out in Raw processing.

It's important though if you shoot jpegs, as you'll have far more difficulty correcting a wrong wb.

Generally speaking most digital cameras set on Auto cope with daylight and flash shots pretty well, but are notoriously unreliable under tungsten or strip lighting.

Under artificial light probably the best way is to set wb in degrees Kelvin, assuming your camera allows it, or first take a custom wb shot and use that to set the wb.

What's this white cap thing then?
 
For shots that you can take your time over, use a grey card to set a custom WB otherwise the set modes are quite reliable as a rule :thumbs:
 
CT - thanks for the info
RAW does not need WB setting, thats ACE :) just another reason to use RAW....not planning on doing any sports phototgraphy yet.
The cap is used to do a custom WB, fit it to the lens and point towards your subject and set custom wb. Its made like a normal lens cap but the round part is semi transparent and white.
 
Thanks moomike
Grey card...? for white balance, this is starting to sound like the "use the unsharp mask" to sharpen in PS. lol

why grey?
 
torque22 said:
RAW does not need WB setting, thats ACE :) just another reason to use RAW....not planning on doing any sports phototgraphy yet.
Click to expand...

As Arkady says..."Shoot jpegs if someone holds a gun to your head"
 
Whilst it's not essential to set the WB with RAW it does help if you at least get it close because the WB presets in RAW converters aren't always that accurate either. I've got 115 photos from a freinds wedding to go through, most of which need some WB correction and it's one more thing I could do without.
 
I find the easiest thing to do if your shooting indoors or out is just set the white balance to cloudy, all your shots shot indoors will be wrong on the WB, but they will all be out by the same amount, you can then select them all at once in your RAW converter and custom set the white balance for them all at once, I find its very easy to do and saves a lot of time if say your shooting the reception of a wedding and they are all inside.

If i'm just shooting in variable conditions etc I just pick the closest WB setting to how it is when i start shooting and go from there.

If you have loads of time on your hands use Auto WB and then tweak each shot when you convert it individually.

Its really just what your comfortable with, and find the easiest.
 
torque22 said:
Thanks moomike
Grey card...? for white balance, this is starting to sound like the "use the unsharp mask" to sharpen in PS. lol

why grey?
Click to expand...

Your camera will "see" the average tones of your image as an even 18% grey.
Auto is normally fine but if you encounter a difficult scene to meter for - eg - snow. Your camera will see the averagely white tones as averagely grey & therefore underexpose.
Likewise, If the scene is particularly dark, shadow detail may be lost if the camera overexposes to compensate.

By using a grey card, you are basically taking all of the guesswork out of your cameras metering & allowing it no opportunity to mess up the scene - telling it exactly what you want the average, 18% grey reading to be based upon the reflected light from the scene :thumbs:
 
Soz for the delay in reply Keltic - had 'wifey' things to do all day yesterday!

The Expo sits on the front of your lens and you simply take a shot through it (on auto exp), the camera remembers the WB setting as a Custom setting and hey presto - that's it

In the field i.e. wedding, you ideally go to where the couple are and point it back towards where you'll take the shot from - turning the camera into an incident meter in effect. On a Nikon it takes about 10 secs in all, Canon needs a few more as there's more submenu settings to go through, but still easy. In more complex WB areas or for landscapes, they recommend simply pointing at the subject instead

I think it's a great time saving tool, and instantly saw an improvement in the studio too as the Flash WB setting was about 300k off the Expo one, with the Expo being better

I like to 'know' what the WB setting should be rather than having to guess in the raw process later and apply to all similar shots each time - makes sense to me :shrug:
 
thanks for the replies and information :thumbs:

I don't think that i can go to the expense of the expo, but how much does this grey card cost, or is that the expo?

I think I will prob stick to auto when shooting raw and use my white cap for custom WB if i do any JPG shots for speed.
 
Thanks for the link Carl
the pocket one looks a bit small, do you cary the studio version about with you?
 
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