white balance

[Ady N]

Can anyone explain why wb on a mobile phone is more accurate than a pro dslr?

 

[Phil V]

Can anyone explain why wb on a mobile phone is more accurate than a pro dslr?

Can you show specific examples?

 

[Ady N]

On mobile at moment so not the easiest to type on and can't attach pics but basically was working in a sports hall with mixed lighting. To get a good result I manually set wb to 2500 and then temp in lr was reduced by 10 before printing and results were ok but I took a snap with the mobile in the same hall and on screen the col bal looks vv good with no tweaking. Auto on dslr was horrendous.......

 

[Deleted member 34016]

On mobile at moment so not the easiest to type on and can't attach pics but basically was working in a sports hall with mixed lighting. To get a good result I manually set wb to 2500 and then temp in lr was reduced by 10 before printing and results were ok but I took a snap with the mobile in the same hall and on screen the col bal looks vv good with no tweaking. Auto on dslr was horrendous.......

so, youre comparing a manual setting against an Auto setting then - hows that a fair comparison

Les :shrug:

 

[Ady N]

Mobile Phone WB was auto/normal/not altered so shot was fully auto and based on how it looked on the screen I would be happy to print & sell (if it had been from DSLR) but the auto WB on the DSLR looked very very yellow on the screen so needed quite extreme tweaking to look 'right' - that was my comparison. My question is how can the sensor in the phone get it much closer than the camera? I have heard this before from various sources but no explanation as to why

 

[PJ S]

A lot of cameras struggle to give a good/correct Auto WB in mixed lighting.
On a DSLR, it could be construed that not all that much effort has been put in to bother making it highly accurate as someone who cares about such matters, will use Custom or be shooting in RAW, and using a grey card.
I would also contend that the LCD display on the back of the DSLR is less accurate than the cameraphone's (which is probably it's core component and most expensive item on the bill of materials), and therefore costs considerably less.
As such, more time in development and algorithm design is allocated to the Auto feature, since it'd be the most often used setting.

 

[Ady N]

A lot of cameras struggle to give a good/correct Auto WB in mixed lighting.
On a DSLR, it could be construed that not all that much effort has been put in to bother making it highly accurate as someone who cares about such matters, will use Custom or be shooting in RAW, and using a grey card.
I would also contend that the LCD display on the back of the DSLR is less accurate than the cameraphone's (which is probably it's core component and most expensive item on the bill of materials), and therefore costs considerably less.
As such, more time in development and algorithm design is allocated to the Auto feature, since it'd be the most often used setting.

Seems a little odd that you need to set a custom or manual WB with additional tweaks in LR to get the WB looking like the standard output from a mobile phone. Quite a few people were holding up Ipads and the WB on those looked bloody good. The hall I was in is well known to be a tough one for WB for various pro bodies so wasn't just me having a paddy over having to move away from auto WB. I actually set a custom WB with my grey card but ended up getting better results at 2,500 Kelvins on manual.

 

[Phil V]

I believe that DSLRs do this on purpose, but I have no proof!

However, as a photographer, if I'm shooting in warm or cool light, it's often for a reason, so the camera always giving a perfect WB would annoy the f#€* out of me. A great sunset should be full of colour, a bright white sun and grey sky isn't what I'd want to see.

 

[Ady N]

I believe that DSLRs do this on purpose, but I have no proof!

so the camera always giving a perfect WB would annoy the f#€* out of me..

Would be nice for difficult sport halls though!!!!

 

[Phil V]

I know what you mean, but how would they know whether you or I had picked the camera up?

They account for that by allowing us total control over the WB, unfortunately that leads to the faffing about.

The important bit about sports halls though is that the often lights aren't a constant temp (not an expert).

 

[PJ S]

The important bit about sports halls though is that the often lights aren't a constant temp (not an expert).

Should be as they tend to use Sodium bulbs, similar to petrol stations, which would fall in line with the very low 2500ºK used by the OP.
If they ran Metal Halides, it'd be a more natural white in the 4000-4500ºK region.
The mix would be likely to stem from natural light from windows.

 

[Ady N]

I am a little surprised that it seems accepted that it's OK for an Iphone/Nexus tablet/crappy mobile to have a superior handle on WB than a pro body DSLR......

 

[Phil V]

I am a little surprised that it seems accepted that it's OK for an Iphone/Nexus tablet/crappy mobile to have a superior handle on WB than a pro body DSLR......

But a crappy Ford Ka is better to fill with shopping bags than a Ferrari

For the owners of top end dslr's, accurate WB is a skill, not something to simply let the camera guess at.

Photographers need speedy and accurate operation, and ultimately great quality images. None of those other devices comes close as a camera.

 

[Ady N]

For the owners of top end dslr's, accurate WB is a skill, not something to simply let the camera guess at.

Auto WB on top DSLR's does just that - am I asking to much for it to do it better? Why should WB be a weak part of the package? Every aspect of getting the shot is a skill and the latest pro bodies make all the aspects easier for the tog (fast focus, high ISO capability, in-camera processing if desired, high frame rate, etc) so why leave out accurate handling of WB?

 

[PJ S]

I guess Auto WB isn't that high on the list of priorities when it comes to allocating the R&D budget. Man-hours are spent on what key features the new model(s) must have, and efforts are focused in getting those nailed down in time to meet the production run deadline.
After that, it's firmware bugs missed or that there was no solution to at the time of signing off.
That there's not a huge clamour or much wailing and gnashing of teeth in reviews about the poor AWB, then there's no impetus for the manufacturer to fix what's seemingly not broken.

PP will correct any WB error, and depending on image size, re-saving a JPEG once more at max quality setting, will cause no major worries.

 

[Phil V]

Auto WB on top DSLR's does just that - am I asking to much for it to do it better? Why should WB be a weak part of the package? Every aspect of getting the shot is a skill and the latest pro bodies make all the aspects easier for the tog (fast focus, high ISO capability, in-camera processing if desired, high frame rate, etc) so why leave out accurate handling of WB?

Define 'accurate'?

That's the problem here as I said earlier. When Canon are making a P&S they know that the user will expect a fairly neutral look to their images, so the auto WB tries to give that.

As a keen photographer I have invested a lot of time and effort learning stuff, and I put effort into lighting what I shoot, so if I choose to shoot under tungsten light, I want to see some of that colour cast. Because I chose it. If I want to remove that cast, I'll choose a custom WB, likewise if I'm mixing flash with tungsten I'll gel the flash.

The point is, the camera can't 'know' what my intention is (unlike the casual snapper), so how would a really accurate auto WB help me 'as a photographer'? I don't want my sunsets cooling, when would the camera 'know' I want some warmth?

Your perspective is fixed, and you know what you want the camera to do! But you have no idea what I or anyone else wants it to do, nor do the camera manufacturers. So they leave us with options and take a guess based on their research (which is different for a P&S or a camera phone user).

 

[Phil V]

... Every aspect of getting the shot is a skill and the latest pro bodies make all the aspects easier for the tog

I'll pick up on this as a case in point. Have you set up the AF on a top of the line DSLR? The camera certainly isn't made easier as the technology gets better, as the tech gets better, the choices become complicated and it gets harder to use (but better in the long run if we learn to use it).

 

[Ady N]

I see what you are saying and I know that there are a lot of settings/tweaks that can be made on a DSLR in respect to WB, especially pp if shooting raw. My gripe (mainly on the day in question) was why I had to go to the extent of winding down the wb temp to minimum on the camera to enable a shot that was still slightly yellow and then tweaked in LR to obtain a non colour casted image when the result (colour wise) was (or looked) bob on via a mobile/tablet device in a room with a mix of sodium & natural lighting. Give us all the manual tweaks available for wb on the camera but what I am getting at is on auto why so far removed from much lesser picture taking devices? It just made me think on the day when I took the snap on my Galaxy phone that's all.
In 'normal' conditions the auto does a very good job but seems out gunned by mobiles when used under challenging lighting indoors which to me seems slightly odd.

 

[chrispictures]

I,m thinking that maybe top end dslr have a large bit depth of colour so there is more to go wrong but as I shoot raw I then have the option to change in acr, this you could not do with a weak colour depth from a mobile or compact. I agree with the statement above ,when I shoot a sunset I dont have my wb set to sunny but use cloudy or shade to bring out the reds and yellows, However I do agree that a lot of dlsr cams are not that great at wb especially in artificial light when i then switch to k values.
I was out shooting a band in a club and it took me a while to get wb right with my d700 24-70 and sb900 and wb colour correction gels ,all that money spent and my daughters pics from her iphone were correct first time, however on the computer hers were full of noise and unsharp and mine were used in a mag.

 

[chrispictures]

I,m thinking that maybe top end dslr have a large bit depth of colour so there is more to go wrong but as I shoot raw I then have the option to change in acr, this you could not do with a weak colour depth from a mobile or compact. I agree with the statement above ,when I shoot a sunset I dont have my wb set to sunny but use cloudy or shade to bring out the reds and yellows, However I do agree that a lot of dlsr cams are not that great at wb especially in artificial light when i then switch to k values.
I was out shooting a band in a club and it took me a while to get wb right with my d700 24-70 and sb900 and wb colour correction gels ,all that money spent and my daughters pics from her iphone were correct first time, however on the computer hers were full of noise and unsharp and mine were used in a mag.

 

[Ady N]

,all that money spent and my daughters pics from her iphone were correct first time, however on the computer hers were full of noise and unsharp and mine were used in a mag.

I know!!! There are some plus sides to pro gear