Lighting and white balance questions (Panny FZ5)

damian5000

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My girlfriend is purchasing a Panasonic DMC FZ5...everything sounds great about the camera, except for this:

From DPREVIEW (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicfz5/page5.asp)
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In use - especially outdoors - the FZ5 delivers consistently accurate color. Under artificial lighting the results are more patchy. You'll need to use manual white balance under incandescent lighting, though the results from auto white balance under fluorescent lighting are good (much better than the FZ3). When light levels drop (indoors at night) you'll get very orange results under tungsten lights unless you switch to manual WB.
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My understanding of light bulbs is that all light bulbs are incandescent (?) and that the common everyday light bulb is tungsten (?), so basically anytime she's indoors, to get a decent picture with this camera she'll have to use manual white balance??

How easy is it to manually set the white balance? I mean, would a layman be able to get relatively balanced pictures easily?

My concern is that it might be a pain in the ass for her to take decent looking shots indoors...

Thanks in advance for the help...

- Damian
 
It depends on the camera. There may be a very easy menu setting to just change from 'auto' to tungsten... or cloudy... or shade etc.
Or you may have to actually enter in manually how red/blue/green you want the photo to be. So check out the camera menu's a bit more before you buy it.
 
The latter is what i was afraid of... I looked some more into it and saw it has a halogen and a flash white balance setting, but no tungsten.

Anybody have experience with this camera as far as how difficult it is to set the white balance when shooting indoors? She's not going to be doing "professional shots", so it's not important they be perfect...But i would like her to be able to take at least good looking shots indoors without too much fuss...

It amazes me they wouldn't include a tungsten WB setting if it has troubles with it as dpreview notes...

- Damian
 
Halogen and flash colour temperature should be about the same as daylight (5400K).
Colour temperature for all other light sources is variable - depends on type, wattage and age. But it does suprise me they don't include an approximate setting. Generally speaking flourescents are around 4000K and household tungsten bulbs are 2800-3000K.
Normally you should have a White Balance set up. The usual method is to fill the camera frame with something white - a piece of card or a sheet - at a distance that allows it to be illuminated by whatever light source you have. Then you take a reading using the WB setting - and there you go.
It's the same method for all digital cameras (video and still).
Just remember to change it again when you go outside or use flash, else everything will come out blue.
 

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