Does the white balance look right??

[TamiAz]

I've been reading a lot about the Expo disc, but didn't want to spend $100 so I did some research and found one for $5 on Amazon. The brand is Mennon and it was very easy to use..I'm struggling with white balance and I'm excited that this might help. Here is a practice shot I did today and I think the second image looks good. Both pictures are sooc.

1) auto wb

2) I used the "pre" setting for wb and the disc.

 

[Dao]

The 2nd photos seems to be a little yellow to me. The dog tag is not grey in color.

 

[amandamartin]

First one looks a little too blue.

 

[TamiAz]

The 2nd photos seems to be a little yellow to me. The dog tag is not grey in color.

I'm not sure what you mean about the dog tag. It looks grey to me.

First one looks a little too blue.

I used auto white balance for the first picture and I wanted to compare it to the 2nd picture after using the wb disc.

 

[cgipson1]

#1 appears to be a little underexposed on my calibrated monitor.. and does have a blue cast from being shot in the shade with no fill flash.

#2 Looks about right exposure wise.. but not knowing the color of your dog makes it impossible to say. People have skin tones.. this makes it easier to judge WB on people. Dogs are every color under the sun.. so who knows! I will say that #2 is much better than #1

 

[TamiAz]

#1 appears to be a little underexposed on my calibrated monitor.. and does have a blue cast from being shot in the shade with no fill flash.

#2 Looks about right exposure wise.. but not knowing the color of your dog makes it impossible to say. People have skin tones.. this makes it easier to judge WB on people. Dogs are every color under the sun.. so who knows! I will say that #2 is much better than #1

Thanks for the input..

 

[Dao]

I'm not sure what you mean about the dog tag. It looks grey to me.

Maybe I need use my idisplay2 and re-calibrated my monitor again (did that a month or 2 ago). The dog tag looks a little warm in my monitor. Or if the photo was taken during sun set, then the dog tag should look warm then.

 

[Ysarex]

Ok, so your post isn't exactly making sense or I'm not understanding "pre" setting. Using the disk you should set a custom white balance.

In any case the first photo is a typical auto white balance disaster. Nothing unexpected there as auto white balance can always be counted on not to work.

Moving on to the second photo, Dao is certainly on to something in suggesting the dog tag should be more neutral. I think your second photo should have looked more like this.

I adjusted the white balance to remove red and make the tag more neutral and then I normalized the tone response with a Levels adjustment.

Joe

 

[KmH]

You got $5 worth.

Get a good gray card - GENUINE WhiBal G7 Certified Neutral White Balance Card - Pocket Card (2.1"x3.35")

I sure wish I had invented the ExpoDisc. What a money maker. No doubt, it works, but it sure is way overpriced.

 

[TamiAz]

Thanks for all the feedback!

Ok, so your post isn't exactly making sense or I'm not understanding "pre" setting. Using the disk you should set a custom white balance.

In any case the first photo is a typical auto white balance disaster. Nothing unexpected there as auto white balance can always be counted on not to work.

Moving on to the second photo, Dao is certainly on to something in suggesting the dog tag should be more neutral. I think your second photo should have looked more like this.

I adjusted the white balance to remove red and make the tag more neutral and then I normalized the tone response with a Levels adjustment.

Sorry if my post was confusing.. The "pre" is the preset manual white balance setting in my camera. I used that setting when I used the wb disc. The dog tag is silver, so I'm not sure how it should look more neutral..Maybe I'm just confused. Your edit looks great. I didn't do any type of post processing because wanted compare the wb in both images sooc.

You got $5 worth.

Get a good gray card - GENUINE WhiBal G7 Certified Neutral White Balance Card - Pocket Card (2.1"x3.35")

I sure wish I had invented the ExpoDisc. What a money maker. No doubt, it works, but it sure is way overpriced.

So your saying it didn't work? There is no improvement in the white balance in the second image?

 

[Dao]

If you are using lightroom or something that also has a dropper tool for white balance, you may want to dropper on the dog tag and see what the result looks like.

That is based on the assumption that the dog tag is grey in color. Then the result should be pretty close. (It act as a grey card)

 

[Ysarex]

Thanks for all the feedback!

Ok, so your post isn't exactly making sense or I'm not understanding "pre" setting. Using the disk you should set a custom white balance.

In any case the first photo is a typical auto white balance disaster. Nothing unexpected there as auto white balance can always be counted on not to work.

Moving on to the second photo, Dao is certainly on to something in suggesting the dog tag should be more neutral. I think your second photo should have looked more like this.

I adjusted the white balance to remove red and make the tag more neutral and then I normalized the tone response with a Levels adjustment.

Sorry if my post was confusing.. The "pre" is the preset manual white balance setting in my camera. I used that setting when I used the wb disc. The dog tag is silver, so I'm not sure how it should look more neutral..Maybe I'm just confused. Your edit looks great. I didn't do any type of post processing because wanted compare the wb in both images sooc.

You got $5 worth.

Get a good gray card - GENUINE WhiBal G7 Certified Neutral White Balance Card - Pocket Card (2.1"x3.35")

I sure wish I had invented the ExpoDisc. What a money maker. No doubt, it works, but it sure is way overpriced.

So your saying it didn't work? There is no improvement in the white balance in the second image?

Don't worry about comparing the first and second photos. What you want is better WB from the camera. There's no advantage to considering auto WB or testing against it. Auto WB was created for the consumer market. You can't tell Joe Consumer, "This camera is simple to use, just set the dial to the green camera symbol -- click," and then go into a discussion of WB settings. Joe won't consume. Otherwise auto WB is a marketing dept. fantasy. Marketing 101: When you can't provide the "beef," lie.

The question is; how's the second photo and my question is still, did you follow proper procedure?

The second photo is red. Dao is right in that there's little in the photo to judge by and that complicates matters. You might consider re-doing the test and including an easy to check control -- ideally a grey card or appropriate facsimile. The dog tag as Dao suggests is your best bet in this shot. If you check the dog tag in your photo it's red. Specifically: R =188, G = 177, B = 172. That's a substantial red shift as the red value is 11 points higher than green and 16 points higher than blue. The assumption we're working on is that the tag metal is likely colorless or close to it. In my edit I left the tag a little yellow, but I figured the dog looked better and decided to stick with that. In my edit the tag is R = 154, G = 154, B = 149 -- a lot closer to neutral where all three values would match up. Silver is grey which is neutral.

Ideally the disk you bought is neutral. You say the WB is set to manual and in your first post you used the term "pre" which suggests presets. When the camera is switched off auto WB you can select from a group of presets like daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent etc. or you can set a custom WB. How that custom WB is set varies between camera manufactures and I'm concerned that you applied the correct procedure to get a custom WB from the disk that you purchased.

Joe