Preffered way of setting WB

Ady N

Ady N

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Adrian
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Indoors in 'difficult' lighting what is your preffered method of dealing with white balance?

Do a custom WB in camera

Test shot with grey card

Test shot with black, grey & white card

Other

For my example I am dealing with small groups of people in an indoor space so have time to get a test shot/custom white balance for every shot (if they move to a different location in the room).
If you used the test card/cards do you then apply setting in camera raw or use levels in Photoshop (non LR user!)

Input appreciated.
 
If I have the time then I prefer to do a custom WB but normally just use a grey card in the first shot of a series and use that in ACR to compensate the rest of that set.
 
One quick way is to use live view and scroll through the setting till you find the one that looks best. I prefer the grey card if I have time though.
 
i prefer to do custom white balance using a grey card, however it is a little time consuming...
 
Mostly Auto WB, as I shoot RAW and know I'll be processing all images anyway.I then adjust WB first in LR before any other tweaks.
 
I dont know if nikon have an equivelant to this.. but on canon i can shoot somehting thats white in the room and set that picture as white balance in the camera.. works great in orange sports halls
 
No, not that I know of. In situations like that [I don't shoot sports, but say a gig in a hall] where it's extreme oranges/greens/blues - I would use live view as someone said, and use the Kelvin temp scale to adjust the WB. It changes in real time on the LCD, only takes a few seconds. And you should only need to do it the once. I would definitely do this for video
 
KIPAX said:
I dont know if nikon have an equivelant to this.. but on canon i can shoot somehting thats white in the room and set that picture as white balance in the camera.. works great in orange sports halls
Click to expand...

I think on a lot of the newer Nikon cameras you have two options for setting a custom WB.

Option one is of filling the viewfinder with something grey or white under the lighting conditions and pressing the shutter to measure the colour cast, which the camera compensates for to set the custom WB.

Option two is like the Canon's way, take a picture of something grey or white in the lighting conditions, and then use that image to set the WB.
 
Good tip re live view WB setting - never given that method a go. When people say they use a grey card do you mean you set a custom white balance off it and use cutom WB in camera or use as a reference for the processing stage? Nobody has mentioned shooting a test shot with white, grey & black ref cards in - OTT?

Even shooting raw I have found that in certain lighting conditions using auto cannot be corrected satisfactorily in pp. I recall a table tennis match Kippax shot using a custom WB and someone else posted pics from the same game but they had used auto and they could not fully get rid of the colour cast and the difference was marked.
 
If im just shooting Matter of fact, off the cuff stuff i set white balance manually from presets accordingly.
If im working on something a bit more important then i set a custom white balance, its easy as peas with olympus, hold a known white card or paper in front of the camera, hold custom white balance control and trip the shutter, that's your custom done.
 
Jaffster said:
I just use auto White Balance. Every shot I take is RAW so it's fixed later.
Click to expand...

So your advice is to take bad pictures in raw and fix later? not to attempt to set the white balance and take a good picture?

crazy! :)
 
KIPAX said:
I dont know if nikon have an equivelant to this.. but on canon i can shoot somehting thats white in the room and set that picture as white balance in the camera.. works great in orange sports halls
Click to expand...

Same with me when I'm setting a custom WB. I carry a Canon manual that has a white page in the back so I take a shot of that usually and then set that.
 
modchild said:
Same with me when I'm setting a custom WB. I carry a Canon manual that has a white page in the back so I take a shot of that usually and then set that.
Click to expand...

I need somehting bigger with a zoom.. I am going to start taking a large white paper... i got stuck last week in a sports hall.. absoloutly nothing white to get a reading from ... grey is great for exposure but dosnt hack it for WB in my experience..
 
Jaffster said:
I just use auto White Balance. Every shot I take is RAW so it's fixed later.
Click to expand...

That's probably the worst way to do it, because each exposure will potential have a different (auto assigned) WB. You'll have to correct each frame individually.

Much better to pick a WB preset, so all images will need the same amount of correction (assuming consistent lighting, of course). Ideally pick the preset that's nearest to "natural", but in practise it doesn't much matter as long as its consistent across the set.
 
KIPAX said:
Grey is great for exposure but dosnt hack it for WB in my experience..
Click to expand...

So would the 3 card swatch not be the best option so you could set all 3 points in levels PP? Nobody seems to have mentioned the black/grey/white cards........
 
I shoot RAW so i dont bother. I set WB in PP if i need to. I use WB more as a creative tool than a "must be right" tool.
 
Shooting a grey card is a good way to get an accurate white balance. And an accurate white balance can be a good starting place to get a correct white balance.
 
When shooting indoors I tend to photograph something white and set custom white balance, I always find it harder to get WB close indoors .

Never really bothered outdoors with custom WB as i shoot raw 99% of the time :) and find it easy to get close enough with preset options :)
 
KIPAX said:
So your advice is to take bad pictures in raw and fix later? not to attempt to set the white balance and take a good picture?

crazy! :)
Click to expand...

I thought that the white balance didn't matter in RAW and that's why you could set it after the fact. Or do you mean you set it in camera because seeing stuff with the correct colours is better at the time.

I've always shot RAW in auto WB, taking a white balance card shot for reference as needed and fixing in post as this was explained to me to be the easiest way. Is this not right, or is there a problem doing it this way??
 
PistolPeteUK said:
I thought that the white balance didn't matter in RAW and that's why you could set it after the fact. Or do you mean you set it in camera because seeing stuff with the correct colours is better at the time.

I've always shot RAW in auto WB, taking a white balance card shot for reference as needed and fixing in post as this was explained to me to be the easiest way. Is this not right, or is there a problem doing it this way??
Click to expand...

I did 3 test shots yesterday in a room with mixed lighting

1-Auto WB

2-Auto WB with grey card in shot to give me a WB ref in pp

3-Custom WB from grey card

Results from 2 & 3 were the same but struggled to correct #1 in camera raw. Had to adjust other things to get close to the other 2 shots but even then it was not quite the same even when the temp matched the custom setting. Still nobody has advocated the 3 swatch card............
 
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