cc on color White Balance... how does it look

[Photo Lady]

Much improved; maybe not quite perfect, but 1000% better.

thank you.. i will open my manual and read later..but the camera and i are off to rest..lol

 

[Photo Lady]

just took two more to test it again.. so nervous.. haha.. i want it to be okay.. thanks everyone..

 

[smoke665]

Much improved on color, but now you're chopping off body parts.......That last chicken only has one leg.

 

[Photo Lady]

Much improved on color, but now you're chopping off body parts.......That last chicken only has one leg.

haha i will get better..one thing at a time.. thanks again for all your help.. i will just continue for awhile to practice and see how i can fine tune..ps .. my husband cannot believe i spent almost the entire day doing this.. non photography person..lol

 

[Designer]

Much improved on color, but now you're chopping off body parts.......That last chicken only has one leg.

Well, with a chicken that smart, you don't eat it all at once.

 

[Photo Lady]

Much improved on color, but now you're chopping off body parts.......That last chicken only has one leg.

Well, with a chicken that smart, you don't eat it all at once.

they are so smart... that none of them will ever be eaten.. we even have a 15 yr old rooster.. lol

 

[johngpt]

Interesting thread here Elizabeth.
About a year or two ago I discovered that Macs have an app in their Utilities folder called Digital Color Meter. I use it a lot to help me determine if there is a color cast. I have it set for LAB color mode rather than RGB as in the LAB mode neutrals are supposed to be a value of 0 (zero) in the A channel and B channel. So black should be o in A and B and so should white.
Of course this only helps if there is something in your photo that should be neutral!
My old Canon 40D and my more recent Fuji cameras all tend to make more cool images at their auto WB setting.
I'm not sure if it's inherent in the cameras or if it has to do with the elevation at which I shoot. Exterior shots need the warming whereas interior under natural light tend not to as much.
My old film cameras needed a warming filter when shooting outside at this elevation.

You might look around for a color metering app that would work with whatever computer or tablet you're using.
Or perhaps your editing software might already have this ability.

I don't recall if any of the folks responding to your original post mentioned shooting a grey card held in the light at which you want to shoot your subjects? Or even a white piece of paper. Something that would later tell you what you need to do to remove color casts. From there you can then edit to whatever your artistic sense says you should.

Even without using LAB mode, neutrals in RGB should have fairly equal amounts of R, G and B. Pure white could be a value of 255 in each. Pure black could be 0 in each. The trouble with RGB is that color and brightness are intertwined.

LAB separates those attributes. The L channel has lightness (luminosity or brightness), the A channel has green-magenta and the B channel has blue-yellow. Often editing software has two sliders, one for temperature (blue-yellow) and one for tint (green-magenta), so you might already have seen this idea.

Anyway, using a color metering utility whether in the software you've already got or in some other app might be helpful for you to make the corrections that seem inherently needed in all our cameras.

Cheers,

 

[Photo Lady]

wow thank you for all this information.. i am going to check and see if my pc has Digital Color Meter.. it just might.. but one way or the other i am getting a new pc for xmas so i will make sure when i order that this is installed into a program .. in the mean time i think i have fixed the WB problem so that at least i am not way out there... i appreciate your through explicit explanation of information... thank you

 

[ebyelyakov]

Most of RAW processing SW will allow to show LAB readouts that can be helpful.
On the Internetz there are plenty of "recipes" of what LAB values should be (skin is a big one) and most of those are rubbish. LAB give a good guideline where there things should be, but it is you to assess the image and decide what is right. Say for the skin, generally it is more yellow than magenta (A<B) and none can be negative, but for a very fair skin they will be close -- say A15,B16 and L will be 80, whilst for a hispanic person the B will be substantially higher -- A15, B22 and L will be 55.. and so on.

 

[JBPhotog1]

A better approach to WB is to capture it in camera as accurately as possible for a number of reasons. As previously mentioned, invest in a WB card and do a custom WB in the lighting conditions in which you are shooting. Or take a photo of the WB card(providing you are shooting in Raw) and make a WB adjustment by using the eyedropper in your post processing software, then apply that change to all of the photos in that scenario. There are lots of choices of WB cards and no need to spend lots of money either.
DGK Color Tools Digital Gray Kard Premium White Balance Card Set with Premium Lanyard (Set of Three Cards)

WB can also influence your exposure choice as the Histogram is not reading the Raw data but an interpretation of the rendered in camera JPEG. For example shooting in daylight with your camera set to tungsten will affect the histogram and if you set exposure from it you will find changing the WB back to daylight in your Raw processor will alter the exposure.

Mixed lighting conditions can influence the bias in ways that are not preferable and capturing a WB card is super easy to get you real close to neutral in post. Of course you can colour grade your images to your preference but starting from a known K values helps tremendously.

 

[Photo Lady]

A better approach to WB is to capture it in camera as accurately as possible for a number of reasons. As previously mentioned, invest in a WB card and do a custom WB in the lighting conditions in which you are shooting. Or take a photo of the WB card(providing you are shooting in Raw) and make a WB adjustment by using the eyedropper in your post processing software, then apply that change to all of the photos in that scenario. There are lots of choices of WB cards and no need to spend lots of money either.
DGK Color Tools Digital Gray Kard Premium White Balance Card Set with Premium Lanyard (Set of Three Cards)

WB can also influence your exposure choice as the Histogram is not reading the Raw data but an interpretation of the rendered in camera JPEG. For example shooting in daylight with your camera set to tungsten will affect the histogram and if you set exposure from it you will find changing the WB back to daylight in your Raw processor will alter the exposure.

Mixed lighting conditions can influence the bias in ways that are not preferable and capturing a WB card is super easy to get you real close to neutral in post. Of course you can colour grade your images to your preference but starting from a known K values helps tremendously.

thank you very much

 

[jcdeboever]

WB is subjective. Focus is not. In order to eliminate WB as subjective, you need a gray card. You can always correct in post. You can not correct focus in post. Work on nailing focus, not WB or anything else at this time. When you are confident in focus, concentrate on looking at the outside of the frame in the viewfinder, don't focus on the middle. No worries on bad shots, just focus on frame edge. Then you have to come back on focus once you get the edge of the frame thing. Then, maybe then, you can grade the temp of your pics.

 

[CherylL5]

Try a SS of 500 or more if available light. I noticed that when I went from 200 to 500 the focus improved. Helps not to breathe to hold steady at lower SS speeds.

 

[Photo Lady]

WB is subjective. Focus is not. In order to eliminate WB as subjective, you need a gray card. You can always correct in post. You can not correct focus in post. Work on nailing focus, not WB or anything else at this time. When you are confident in focus, concentrate on looking at the outside of the frame in the viewfinder, don't focus on the middle. No worries on bad shots, just focus on frame edge. Then you have to come back on focus once you get the edge of the frame thing. Then, maybe then, you can grade the temp of your pics.

good info.. yes focus is number one priority.. so yes i will concentrate on this now

 

[Derrel]

You might try learning how to set a custom white balance off of a neutral colored objects such as a white or gray towel or dish towel or washcloth, or a scrap of fabric. A light powder blue Oxford shirt can be used to achieve a delightfully warm white balance. Back in my Fuji S 2 days around 2001-2002 2003 are used to shoot a lot in jpeg mode and I found that setting my own white balance in degrees Kelvin really helped, as did using three custom white balance routines. some cameras set Auto white balance that simply does not look that good. Others are good at setting an Auto white balance under daylight, but many cameras are poor at setting a white balance under artificial lighting conditions. Dpreview testing has shown that the majority of cameras set an acceptable white balance when use under daylight conditions come up but many cameras ,in fact most struggle with artificial light.