setting white points

Hair Bear

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I've seen this mentioned a couple of times along with saving RAW images

Can you give me a little more info please?

Can this be done on a SLR with negs scanned to CD then set white point or is it only for DSLR?

The guy who shoots commercial for me shoots a card at the begining,during and towards the end of the shoot. This card has grays and colours on and he can then check them against the tolerance and change the capture.

Should DSLR's also be doing something similar? Or is this setting white point?
 
Setting the white balance is on digital cameras only. On a film camera, you can use film type or color filters to adjust for different light temperatures.

However, making small adjustments from either scanned film or digital is quite easy. Although not as forgiving as adjusting a RAW file.

On most digital cameras and any DSLR...you have a choice for setting the white balance. You can use auto, which will let the camera decide. You can set it to one of the presets....flash, daylight, cloudy, indoor etc. Or you can set a custom setting. To do this, check your manual. Basically you can take a photo of something white in the light that you have...then use the menu to use that image as your base point. I've heard that you can use a grey card as well.

I know the card that your guy uses. I know they use those to help make their color accurate...but I'm not sure of the exact way in which they do that.

RAW files are good because the White balance has been recorded but not yet applied to the image. So you can change the white balance of the shot...without damaging any of the pixels. When you make color adjustments on a JPEG or other file type...it may start to look funny if you change the color too much.
 
I know the card that your guy uses. I know they use those to help make their color accurate...but I'm not sure of the exact way in which they do that.
A grey card is used not necessarily to make their colour accurate, as with film you have no control unless you filter. It's simply for the person making the separations, or the printer in the darkroom using color neg to pull back any color shifts. If the grey card is correct, then the rest of the scene should be reasnably accurate. This is not a perfect method as different color films record colors differently. I don't use a grey card now, as I shoot digital, but always did when shooting large format.

www.philipweirphotography.com
 
He shoots the card and all shots raw.

He then opens the file in his processing software and eye droppers each square. This gives him referernce points and tells him if the individual squares are with a set tolerance.

I've never seen the shot out of tolerance so i can't tell you how he would adjust!!

I would guess the software would then alter the way the Digital back captures the image.
 
Something like this?
Histo.jpg
 
Thats the littel chap, although those setting look like they have come out of PS.

His are all out of the camera software, nothing happens in PS until I get the file!!!

Interestingly he accepts and in my case wants me too, 'play with' the file when i get it.

I find most digital images need a lot of PS work when I get them. Most look like they have a very slight film over them or a grey wash.

I convert to CMYK as I work in print and then adjust levels keeping an eye on the black and white parts of the image as I go.

I like to see about 80-85% in the black spots, any more and the image will 'fill in' in print. Less and it can look slightly washed out.
 

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