How do you control WB?

[MrsLittle]

I know most of you shoot in RAW, but if you were worried about WB in photos SOOC, what WB system would you use?

I see a lot of photographers keep theirs on cloudy-maybe they are just following a trend or something. I know that can result in some orangey outcomes if not payed attention to, from personal experience.

Does anyone use the K option? I put my WB on k5000 in the afternoon and was very pleased with how fresh the pictures looked, but not sure if that's how it works for all lighting conditions.

 

[DiskoJoe]

the white balance would need to be changed for different times of day when you have different amounts of light. Basically white balance adds yellow or blue to the picture. If you view your photo in post you should be able to adjust this manually with the software and get an idea of how the picture is effected by different white balances.

A good way to test this is take a portrait of someone. If the whites in their eyes has a blue tint then your white balance is too cool and if it has a yellow tint the the white balance is too hot. If it is white then you have it right on.

you can also take a picture of the same object using each different white balance option and see what you get.

hope this helps.

 

[MrsLittle]

[TABLE="class: t1, width: 450"]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]Color Temperature[/TD]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]Light Source[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]1000-2000 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Candlelight[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]2500-3500 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Tungsten Bulb (household variety)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]3000-4000 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Sunrise/Sunset (clear sky)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]4000-5000 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Fluorescent Lamps[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]5000-5500 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Electronic Flash[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]5000-6500 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Daylight with Clear Sky (sun overhead)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]6500-8000 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Moderately Overcast Sky[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #1F1F1F"]9000-10000 K[/TD]
[TD="class: left, bgcolor: #1F1F1F"] Shade or Heavily Overcast Sky[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



Yes, I have tried that way. My worry was since I want to try the K system would I run into problems even if I set my WB to the appropriate number based on the weather/time of day? 5000 seems to work spot on for afternoon sunshine, haven't had the chance to try the other ones.

 

[Big Mike]

The 'K' option is really only useful if you have a color meter...or unless you have a good notion of what specific WB settings will do to your image with the light that you are using.

The 'proper' way go about setting your WB, is to set a custom WB (Pre). Basically, you take a photo of something that is color neutral, in the light that you are using....could be a grey card, a WB target or just white paper (although paper may not be 100% color neutral). You then go into the menu and set that image as your custom WB sample. Then set your WB to 'Pre'.

 

[Big Mike]

 

[MLeeK]

I always set a custom white balance if at all possible. Even though I shoot raw. WHY? because it's one less thing I have to carefully look at in raw processing. No, it's not really "set" in Raw, however it SHOULD be spot on what it displays if you set a custom white balance.

I have several white balance lens caps and I love them. They are a great tool IF YOU USE THEM CORRECTLY. If you are pointing them at a yellow gym floor and shooting for your white balance they are going to be wrong, that yellow does pass through. I do not have the expensive ones. I have cheapies and yes, they can be a matter of getting what you pay for... However I have not had a problem with them and if I get a bad one for $4? I am out... $4. Buy another.

The temperature setting can be very useful if you know what your color temp should be for a given scene-much the same as the preset modes. If you know what preset mode will work where you are pretty good.

 

[Derrel]

White balance depends a lot on local conditions. For example, I used to live in the shadow of a small hill, perhaps 600 feet high. Late in the day, the light outside in the back yard would be mostly SKY-light, not SUN-light, even though the sun had not yet set. That type of lighting is something that one will simply NOT find in many locations. For that type of lighting in the summer months, I would manually set my white balance around 6,000 to 6,800 degrees Kelvin in the area close to the house, which was a lightish blue color. That WB range was good with my Fuji S2 Pro camera. Late in the day WB of 7,500 to 7,800 was more appropriate. With that camera, the AUTO WB would massively FAIL in deep shade situations, creating weird, blocky, cartoon-like color effects, almost like 256-color DOS game color!!! Weird, but very common with that camera in deep shade/low-light OUTDOOR lighting conditions.

Different cameras have different color responses....for example, the Nikon D2x needs WB setting that are 400 to 500 degrees higher than my earlier Nikons needed...

The old "leave the WB on Cloudy" or "Cloudy, with Minus 3 correction units added" was popularized by Moose Peterson back in the Nikon D1 and D1h days of the early 2000's. Yea, I trued that...sorta' worked for those two old cameras...

Here's something to try: go outside about 2 hours before sunset, and take a manual WB reading off of a white card or white-painted chair, or something like that. Set that WB, and call it Custom 2. Then, try shooting at Custom 2 AND in AUTO-WB in your normal locations using the Custom 2 WB for all photos made from say 2 PM until sunset. See how that looks. For other forum experts,I ask that you please, do not hypothesize on how it "will look". Instead, actually DO it.

 

[Destin]

Ok, I've had this question for a LONG time. From time to time I see something like this pop up online, and it confuses me. With my D80, AND in LR high numbers=warmer colors, and lower numbers=cooler temps. This is suggesting the opposite. So what's up? Somebody have an explination?

 

[480sparky42 41]

I generally shoot raw, but even using Auto WB gets me close enough I don't need much post correction. If WB is critical, I use an ExpoDisc to make a preset in the camera, then shoot a gray card right off the bat.

If I'm shooting casual shots in jpeg only, I really don't care about dead-on WB then. They're just snapshots at that point.

 

[Big Mike]

Ok, I've had this question for a LONG time. From time to time I see something like this pop up online, and it confuses me. With my D80, AND in LR high numbers=warmer colors, and lower numbers=cooler temps. This is suggesting the opposite. So what's up? Somebody have an explination?

It just depends what you are calling 'warm' tones and what you're calling 'cool' tones.
Techincally, the blue end of the spectrum is higher color temps....the red end is lower color temps. So even though most people say that red/orange are 'warm' tones and blue is a 'cool' tone....that's not technically accurate.

It makes more sense if you think about flame and how hot it burns. A low heat flame, like a candle...gives off very red/orange light. A hotter flame, like natural gas is blue...and if you get really hot, like an Oxy-Acetylene torch...it can get 'white hot'.

 

[Rephargotohp]

You also have to establish the difference between Tone and Temperature, Warm tones have cooler temperatures and you cool a warm tone by applying an opposing cool tone. ie Yellow tone, apply blue to correct

 

[MLeeK]

In terms of temperature, like a fire HOTTER is blue which is why the scale shows blue at the top... In color temperature it's actually opposite. Whomever did the scale colors just used HEAT temperature colors. The numbers are what you need to pay attention to.

 

[KmH]

That's because of the way the RGB color model works, and the fact luminosity is involved.

RGB is an additive color model. Add equal amounts of red, green and blue, and you get a tone of neutral gray. Add the maximum amout of RGB and you get the maximum neutral color we call white.
Add the minimum amounts of RGB you get the minimum neutral color we call black.

Add More red and blue than green, you get a warmer color.

Notice that on that scale there are no green tones, and that blue is way hotter than red.

 

[Big Mike]

Whomever did the scale colors just used HEAT temperature colors.

They didn't 'just use heat temperatures'.
As I understand it, color temps come from the heat temperatures as applied to black-bodies and the resulting light waves that are emitted.

 

[Derrel]

Several terms of measurement are bass-ackwards...like the "gauge" system, in which a 10-gauge shotgun is a very large-bored shotgun that can launch massive charges of birdshot and is used mostly for long-range waterfowl shooting on high-flying geese, and a 28-gauge shotgun has a tiny little shotgun shell about the size of a man's ring finger in diameter, and was used by Dick Cheney to shoot his quail-hunting partner in the face and chest...the hunting partner of the former Vice President was extremely fortunate that the veep had a tiny,small-bore "28 gauge" shotgun, and not a 12 gauge, which might have had loads that contained 50% more pellets!

Wire is also sized according to "gauge"...12 gauge wire is much heavier and larger in diameter than 18-gauge wire.

Lens aperture numbers are also "bass-ackwards", according to casual thinking patterns...with as we know f/2 being a very large, wide aperture, and f/16 being a narrow, small-diameter hole...