Custom white balance

Yes it can do, if your auto web is not performing well. Then setting custom web using a grey card is the way to go. Remember though if the light changes you'll have to reset it.
 
birrew said:
so im guessing you only really want to you the custom web during natural light or cloudy situations?
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no, it just work better when the conditions are consistent , whatever they may be, if things change, do it again;)
 
better still shoot in RAW leave WB on auto then sort WB out afterwards in PP
Not an option if shooting in JPEG.
 
Setting a custom wb is essential if you're shooting jpeg in tricky conditions. But if you shoot RAW its quicker and easier to set the wb in post. For insurance, its handy to shoot a wb target whenever the conditions change even if you shoot RAW, but it's still better to do the actual adjustment in post.

It depends what youre shooting, but I'd rather fiddle with my gear as little as possible when shooting people, because the relationship with the subject is important.
 
Not so much no point, but, as you can change the WB in post, what benefit will it give?

Genuine question BTW, as some people will find an advantage in some circumstances.
 
You should always try to get the best picture in camera regardless of whether it is a RAW or a Jpeg. Yes, you can alter the WB after the fact with a RAW file, but unless you have a reference point, you are doing it by eye. :shrug:

If possible, try and get the most accurate WB you can. Auto WB is quite good, and getting better, but it can be fooled. The preset WBs are good, but vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even camera to camera within a manufacturers range. You can normally customise the preset WB settings if they are not totally accurate, which can help with Jpegs especially.

Imho accuracy should initially be your aim, and if you move away from that it is for artistic reasons.
 
All that a White Balance Card can do is to give you an accurate white balance, which is rarely the correct white balance.

Shoot in raw and get the correct WB by eyeball. As long as your monitor is calibrated. If it's not, then it doesn't really matter what you do.
 
Some people don't like to do a lot of PP and advocate getting it right at shot.
 
I like playing about with my pics as much as the next man, and shooting in RAW, I have to process all the files that I want to make into pics, but getting things right as possible in camera should be everyone's aim imho.

It may also lead to less processing as well. ;)


Each to their own though. :)
 
It's not about right or wrong or fixing stuff in PP it's about workflow, how and what we're shooting and processing.

If you're shooting at quite a slow pace, it's worth taking a shot of a grey card, white card, colourchart or whatever as a reference.

However, if shooting RAW I can't see the point in applying that WB setting in camera, as it makes no difference to the actual file captured.

Having an accurate WB to sample means that the setting can be applied to many images in a couple of clicks in post.

I can't understand this 'spending time in post' discussion. If you're shooting RAW you're doing it so that you can create the best image possible from your captured data. There's no point in doing that if you don't want to spend time in PP.

If you don't want to spend time processing your images and want to get the best file possible 'created in camera' then you need to use custom WB and set your own picture style tweaks (so your images look how you want) and output the JPEGs.
 
Is there any risk of over exposure on a specific colour channel if the incorrect WB is selected at capture (RAW). I'm thinking especially of selecting the "cloudy" WB setting in warm light, where reds/oranges could be pushed considerably - or is everything fully recoverable as far as WB/colour temp is concerned?
 
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ZoneV said:
Is there any risk of over exposure on a specific colour channel if the incorrect WB is selected at capture (RAW). I'm thinking especially of selecting the "cloudy" WB setting in warm light, where reds/oranges could be pushed considerably - or is everything fully recoverable as far as WB/colour temp is concerned?
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In RAW everything gets recorded. The WB setting is just recorded in the file, if it's wrong it can be discarded.
 
Phil V said:
In RAW everything gets recorded. The WB setting is just recorded in the file, if it's wrong it can be discarded.
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It's still possible to over/under saturate (blow detail) in RAW. Whilst it offers more bits than for example JPEG, it's still far from infinite.

Edit: or are you saying that as far as (digital) WB is concerned, the full range is never lost, as though it were an adjustable layer rather than affecting the image itself?
 
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ZoneV said:
It's still possible to over/under saturate (blow detail) in RAW. Whilst it offers more bits than for example JPEG, it's still far from infinite.

Edit: or are you saying that as far as (digital) WB is concerned, the full range is never lost, as though it were an adjustable layer rather than affecting the image itself?
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Of course it's still possible to blow detail.

The WB setting is not even a layer, it's simply an instruction which (if I understand correctly) tells the software how to display/convert the image.

If you set a custom WB and then open the image in a crude RAW editor (not so common nowadays) your custom WB settings are lost. This was common in the early days of digital, where only the camera manufacturers software took any notice of the WB or picture styles.

Nowadays those things are mimicked by (most if not all) 3rd party conversion software. But note mimicked, most people will confirm that the same file will look different processed in different RAW converters.

Anyone can run the experiment with 2 files shot with different WB set in camera (one correct) and then opening those files in a RAW converter and changing the WB presets in there. You'll see 2 files which look different on opening which can be converted to exactly the same file. Then for fun do the experiment with a different RAW converter, and the same is true again. However it's really difficult to exactly match the files to the output of the first RAW converter. Because what the RAW converter is doing is applying a series of calculations. There's nothing 'right' it's just a sofware engineers 'best guess'.

As above (and much more concise) even a custom WB setting will only give a 'correct' white point, it doesn't guarantee the file will look 'right'.
 
A pal of mine religiously uses a grey card to ensure the correct WB in his (Wedding) shots, but that's only accurate when they stay still and the light doesn't change

Even during the ceremony in church the WB can be all over the place due to cloud movement, and outside it changes on a walk as they pass through shadow too

So as Phil says, for many practical reasons it can be better to just set the WB later and 'batch' each series of images that were shot at the same time/lighting

The final nail in the coffin for me is that the 'correct' WB can often be a little 'cold' for such happy events as Weddings so its common to warm things up a bit - i.e. ignore the true WB in favour of another chosen by eye

Bizarrely - even my religiously grey carding mate does that too - WTF :shrug:

Dave
 
I had a nightmare back along, photographing in a leisure centre with those orange lights, I tried all sorts to get it right in camera to no avail.

In the end I photographed myself wearing a white tshirt, use that in lightroom as wb ref point and synced all 200+ photos.
 
I can see no advantage in trying to obtain perfect white balance at the time of the shoot if you are shooting RAW. Nothing is set in RAW, and the WB can be adjusted with equal facility afterwards. Why not just concentrate on the photography instead. So long as one image from the session has a known grey value in it, don't worry.
 
Some people get hung up on 'right' WB as if it's an agreed constant.

If I shoot a landscape at midday and one an hour before sunset, they're lit by different coloured light.

If I make a custom setting for the white point, I can create 2 files with very similar colours.

What is correct about that? What I'm shooting ought to be a representation of what I'm looking at, whilst our eyes are quite good at auto WB we still know that some sunlight is warmer than other sunlight. What's the point in our images if they don't reflect the reality we've tried to capture?
 
hollis_f said:
What's wrong with trying to improve on reality?
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Nothing wrong with trying to 'improve' on reality, but there's definitely something wrong with trying to make a beautiful warm sunlit evening look like a cool noon sunlit shot because it's 'right'.

See it doesn't really help if you take one sentence out of it's context.
 
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