White Balance.. What do you do?

Not sure about this as I haven't tried it! But as far as shooting jpegs are concerned can you not find / adjust for the best WB by using live view :thinking:
 
I have a couple of questions on white balance, thought I'd add to this rather than making a new thread.

So far most of my images have been taken inside and under varying un-natural lights etc.

I mostly shoot Jpeg, so for now I'm not interested in shooting raw and playing with programs to sort out lighting. At this point I want to learn to get a decent result with my camera.

Reading a book on my 50D it gives a method of getting custom white balance using a white card with a cross on it to focus. I've done that.

I've been looking around an I'm getting a bit mixed up on Grey and White cards. I see people saying they set white balance on grey cards.

My understanding has been you set white balance with a white card and use a grey card to set exposure for light metering.

Is this correct?
 
I use auto WB and generally it gets the colour balance right or right enough for me. On the offchance that it gets it slightly out I just alter it in Canon DPP.
 
dannyjo22 said:
I have a couple of questions on white balance, thought I'd add to this rather than making a new thread.

So far most of my images have been taken inside and under varying un-natural lights etc.

I mostly shoot Jpeg, so for now I'm not interested in shooting raw and playing with programs to sort out lighting. At this point I want to learn to get a decent result with my camera.

Reading a book on my 50D it gives a method of getting custom white balance using a white card with a cross on it to focus. I've done that.

I've been looking around an I'm getting a bit mixed up on Grey and White cards. I see people saying they set white balance on grey cards.

My understanding has been you set white balance with a white card and use a grey card to set exposure for light metering.

Is this correct?
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You can use any neutral colour to set your white balance I believe - white or grey can be used for white balance. You can also set exposure with either too if you know what you're doing but I'm not sure many do?
 
EOS_JD said:
You can use any neutral colour to set your white balance I believe
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Theoretically, yes. :)

Although, you'd be surprised how many white & grey sources aren't really all that neutral (our brain plays tricks on us).

EOS_JD said:
You can also set exposure with either too if you now what you're doing but I'm not sure many do?
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I do it with video all the time (on the black/grey/white side of my Xpobalance) - because it's continuous light (regardless of whether it's natural or artificial) and lets me lock the exposure, but not so much with stills using flash.
 
Ignore the subject I was playing with my white balance as most of my shots at the momemt are indoors. I took one shot on custom WB and the other on AWB. The custom one I took by placing a white piece of paper infront of the tiger and setting up.

Which do you think looks better and more natural, I'm undecided right now.



 
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The first is definitely the more correct "neutral" white balance, and the one I'd probably want if I were looking to purchase such an image on a stock site (then I can play around with it and adjust myself if I wished to suit the style of whatever I was using the image in).

The slightly warmer second one looks more homely and "awwww", although if you were doing this with images you intended to sell as stock, it would be more difficult for a buyer to bring back the neutral tones and accurate colour in a JPG.

Sometimes neutral looks better, sometimes warmer looks better, and sometimes cooler looks better. It all really depends on what emotions (if any) you're trying to stir in the viewer, and whether you're trying to sell the images you produce. Sometimes getting it neutral is more imporant than trying to put over an emotion as the buyer can recolour it to whatever they want to get across.
 
Kaouthia said:
Theoretically, yes. :)

Although, you'd be surprised how many white & grey sources aren't really all that neutral (our brain plays tricks on us).


I do it with video all the time (on the black/grey/white side of my Xpobalance) - because it's continuous light (regardless of whether it's natural or artificial) and lets me lock the exposure, but not so much with stills using flash.
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With stills you shoot until the white is as close to the right as possible without clipping. THis should also give a soike in the centre and to the left.
 
i plan to buy and use colorchecker passport... that will help me get my wb and my colours right... however it may have more value to me than you since i am colour blind.
 
I know how to do it with stills, I just don't.

My lighting setups, especially on a location, generally move around quite a bit during the course of a shoot, and having to stop every 3 or 4 shots to recalibrate exposure with a WB card is just far more effort than I'm willing to expend. :)

In a studio, where your subject is in a static position from the lights, sure, go for it, but I'd rather just shoot the subject, and view my histogram to see if things are where I need them to be and bump my flash power/aperture accordingly.
 
I shoot RAW with it set to 5600°K.
It lets me start from a known point, so that the photos can be shifted to give them the "look" of the light they were shot under.

For example, if you take shots in a restaurant, IMO they shouldn't look as if they were shot in daylight as they may do if you 100% correct the whitebalance. Og, day-glo orange is a no-no, but I just use the 5600k as a starting point.

If I'm shooting something for which colour is critical (700+ buttons, for example... ) I'll make a custom WB preset from a greycard.
 
Trev Rich said:
Wow Darren, nice post. Thanks :thumbs:

Is WB less of an issue in RAW? because it records things as they are with no processing?
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it will keep all info if you set your WB it has this setting tagged and will be there when you open it in ACR but you can change it after this is what is good about RAW files it keeps all the settings you have set on camera BUT not set in stone you can change it after.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Ignore the subject I was playing with my white balance as most of my shots at the momemt are indoors. I took one shot on custom WB and the other on AWB. The custom one I took by placing a white piece of paper infront of the tiger and setting up.

Which do you think looks better and more natural, I'm undecided right now.



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I think more like this to be correct WB the fur looks more real colour and the whites look white tome on my calibrated screen I can tell you how I got it as well if you like this ,..
4619352830_30d52bcc6c_o.jpg
 
Chaz Photos said:
I think more like this to be correct WB the fur looks more real colour and the whites look white tome on my calibrated screen I can tell you how I got it as well if you like this ,..[/IMG]
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Yeah please do.

BTW the top image was AWB and the bottom was custom set using a piece of white paper. Food for thought for me that so far people have preferred the AWB one.
 
Well, the auto white balance one will have assumed that whatever is closest to white is actually neutral, and adjusted itself accordingly (although double checking the numbers in photoshop, even "white" is a little cool.

The second one looks very warm to me, and implies that the "white" in the ears and on the feet is not actually white at all (which would be what the camera was basing its "auto" white balance off).

As I said, neutral isn't always what looks best, even though it may be more technically accurate.
 
I use These, Digital Grey Kard when i need to, ie snow or funny light. Most of the time i shoot RAW with Auto set.
Beauty is, setting a custom WB on the GF1 is a piece of cake, lot easier than it was on my D80.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Ignore the subject I was playing with my white balance as most of my shots at the momemt are indoors. I took one shot on custom WB and the other on AWB. The custom one I took by placing a white piece of paper infront of the tiger and setting up.

Which do you think looks better and more natural, I'm undecided right now.



Click to expand...

First pic. But something between the two would be better !
I will use a card if i get the time. If not i am in RAW so i leave it up to the $10000 that have been invested in development of the kit.

But My wife loves playing with the WB on her Canon G9 and now gets much better pics when she sets the correct indoor lighting.
 
Shoot Raw and leave it set to auto and tweak in Post Processing. I have some presets saved in Lightroom for quicker adjustments.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Yeah please do.

BTW the top image was AWB and the bottom was custom set using a piece of white paper. Food for thought for me that so far people have preferred the AWB one.
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Open adjustment layer, Threshold move the slider to right till only see last pixel mark this with colour sampler
Delete this adjustment layer
Now open adjustment layer/curves and take the white dropper and click on the marked white pixel.
This now sets the highest point to white. With your image this is all I did other need more steps.
 
I shoot in RAW. Even if I don't use a custom WB setting I try to set a specific white balance, instead of AUTO, so that any cast is consistent across a shoot and WB correction can be applied in a batch in Camera Raw. Saves a lot of time.
 
I use an expo disc ( cheap version ) whether shooting raw or jpeg because it could be days after shooting that i get round to doing any pp & forget what the scene was like for WB.
 
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