Auto white balance always wrong in cloudy or snowy conditions?

[Alex_B]

So are you

Mark, Andrew, Jesse, Isaiah, Khris, or
Isaiah Mark Andrew Jesse Eves??

I am confused now.

 

[Majik Imaje]

so I moved to anchorage to finish processing, thousands of prints, I rented a studio apartment and moved all my stuff down. and then back up to the village later.

I had a durst color processor.. but breaking out from the chemicals was still a big problem.. Last time I processed color was 1985 and I can still do it blind folded. when you have your hands in water for 25 years.. you can actually tell the temp with your hands! IF you have practiced and paid attention! Your skin is very sensitive to temp changes.!

 

[Majik Imaje]

I am the "father" the very PROUD father of four high school dropouts... ..

that make more in one month.. at home than I could ever make in a year

working as a union electrican!

http://majikimaje.com/shophere/agora.cgi FOSSILIZED IVORY !

when .. ?? have you ever heard of 4 hs. dropouts making 40 - 80K

in ONE MONTH!.. ??

I can back up EVERYTHING I say.! and I have absolutely no problem ever.. .. admitting when I am WRONG!

 

[Majik Imaje]

.. .. and when I walked into pump station # 6 on the Trans - Alaska - Pipeline, I was working on a job and I told the supervisor, Your fire alarm system is wired backwards.. and he jumped on me just like Avis did.. who the hell are you he said to me. We test this system 3 times a day for seventeen years.. you are so full of it he said.. get the hell out of here.
Next day.. I get this.. .. !!

Avis.. you have been on ever construction job I have ever worked on. and I have always proven you wrong.. EVERYTIME.!

If I don't know what I am talking about, then I will keep my mouth shut! but if I do take the time to type something in to try and help someone THINK and learn and practice.. THEN IT IS TIME TESTED FOR OVER 3 DECADES! ok ! thanks.. when Kodak says PAIINT A DARKROOM WHITE! well no wonder my first two darkrooms were so hard to work in!

 

[w.pasman]

As said, some cameras are better than others in guessing what would be the right white balance. Going RAW and doing WB afterwards is best way to go. Correcting WB in JPEGs is asking for trouble (deminished color depth).
If I really had to take JPEGs, I would use the on-camera display to check the WB and shoot until satisfied with the WB. I think a minor WB correction on JPEGs afterwards can be done.

Majik,

IMHO the background of your snow images is way overexposed. Your rules of thumb may be a good starting point but I would have chosen shorter shutters for the photos you show. People are nicely exposed though.

 

[Avis]

We can argue about anything in here, but that post was unneccessarily rude. If somone didn't take any images for decades, that does not mean he forgot everything.

It was not meant to be rude - or no more rude than Majik Imaje has already been to others on this Board without provocation. You have taken it out of context.
It was meant as a rhetorical question anyway but the answer has been illuminating. It is just a pity we had to go through this to get there.

 

[Majik Imaje]

QUOTE;"Your posts have a small amount of basic knowledge in them hidden under a whole heap of bullsh*t, waffle and patronising, arrogant, bigoted opinion."


Thank you for your "professional" advice. but in all the posts I have made on this great web site forum.

you sir., are the only one .. making statments and twisting around my words. and you have to "hide" ? as another identity? ha ha ha..

I was born at night.. ... but it wasn't last night!

 

[w.pasman]

Sorry I missed part of your question... but others apparently also :-D

In all cases the autowhite balance fails to get it right. In the first case the correct setting appeared to be cloudy +2, the second cloudy +0 and the final one setting it to sunlight.

If these are in the normal range of the camera why does it sometimes go so wrong? Do other photographers here always set their whitebalance manually with a grey card?

This sounds pretty normal to me. Overcast usually gives blueish tint. And your auto white balance might get confused if the church windows are teinted red or so. Neutral daylight setting should be OK with most sunlight lit settings, inside as with the church or outside. Snow probably reflects more blue from the sky than other environments.

 

[Garbz]

Actually something I was trying to dig out of the knowledge on this board is the theory behind how AutoWB works, and far more importantly why some packages do such a fantastic job and others produce a load of crap.

I am well aware where the issues are with whitebalancing relating to light sources such as the sun the sky and the image itself. Just wondering why the camera fouls it up while Nikon Capture 4.4 does a fantastic job. Afterall the camera is more recent then the software