Proper white balance techniques?

[MLeeK]

That's all fine and well when you are shooting for personal reasons, but when you are selling to a client who is expecting perfect, then what is your take on it?

It depends on the client, to a large degree, and as a professional I am sure you're fully aware of catering to your client's tastes and desires. If the client is relatively sophisticated and shares modern tastes, you're going to get the whites pure white, you're going to push the contrast to ridiculous levels on any black and whites, you're probably going to either over saturate or under saturate, and if you undersaturate you're probably going to push contrast into the midtones.

If you're shooting for ME, you might choose a more naturalistic rendering of the whites, letting them look bluer in the shade and warmer in the sun, and warmer still indoors.

If you're shooting for a relatively unsophisticated bride, you're going to make your photographs look as much as possible like whatever her recently married friends are likely to have seen, which is probably related to the first client's taste. Wedding dresses in particular are problematic, since you're going to want them to look white in anything formal (since the white is often the point of the dress), but you might elect a more naturalistic color balance for informals, depending on what styles are prevalent.

If you're shooting football, you might consider pushing the white balance to give night games one look, and day games another -- cooler and warmer, I suppose? I don't really know the color temp of the huge banks of stadium lights, though.

What's perfect? If your client knows and can articulate it, do that, regardless of what people on the internet say. If your client doesn't or can't, try to hit whatever the local market is doing. If that's still not enough, make it look however you think looks best.

I think you have some good points in there, but they tend to make me feel like you are still striving for a 'correct' white balance in every situation.
Let me explain: Slightly warm or cool or whatever your taste may be, you still would never put out blue, glowing orange or magenta skin tones. You aim for your whites that are in the consistent light to be white. The ones in the shade would be cool as would the opposite if you were shooting in the shade. You wouldn't take an image shot in the shade where the color is cool but has a background in the warm evening sun and make the shaded subject blue so that the background would be proper. Nor would you make the sun cool to match the tone of the subject. The sun would remain warm-or even warmer as you raise the color on your subject to be in range for proper skin tone. Will the skin tone be exactly the same as the subject's skin? Maybe to probably not. It'd be enough correct to not draw the eye thinking HOLY ORANGE DUDE or HOLY DEAD BODY!

In short I think you are right about obsessing about the white balance being slightly eggshell instead of pure is really unrealistic. As a matter of fact, many whites ARE a blue tint or a warm tint that we just don't notice unless we are able to and LOOKING for it. If you look at computer paper from several different manufacturers some will be blueish and some will be creamier. They're all white until you put them together in one report and compare.

However, that's not exactly how your post seemed. It seemed as if fixing things is kind of pointless overall when average people just plain don't see it. They may not consciously see a bad color, but they also know if something feels not right about it. It has to be within a tolerance for correct. The chances of us knowing that the person really was shaded in blues and should be blue are slim if we see a blue person.

Football, on the other hand is a whole different ballgame. Night games are a nightmare in a rainbow of color. Day games are easy if they are early, however if the sun is going down the color temp actually skyrockets for a while-BUT if I left it at say 7200K people would most definitely notice it is orange. I don't care so much about perfectly CORRECT as I care about LOOKING correct within a tolerance. A bank of football lights has a range from about 3200K to sometimes near 5000K and you can get everything in between in about one minute. Some are better than others.

 

[fjrabon]

That's all fine and well when you are shooting for personal reasons, but when you are selling to a client who is expecting perfect, then what is your take on it?

It depends on the client, to a large degree, and as a professional I am sure you're fully aware of catering to your client's tastes and desires. If the client is relatively sophisticated and shares modern tastes, you're going to get the whites pure white, you're going to push the contrast to ridiculous levels on any black and whites, you're probably going to either over saturate or under saturate, and if you undersaturate you're probably going to push contrast into the midtones.

If you're shooting for ME, you might choose a more naturalistic rendering of the whites, letting them look bluer in the shade and warmer in the sun, and warmer still indoors.

If you're shooting for a relatively unsophisticated bride, you're going to make your photographs look as much as possible like whatever her recently married friends are likely to have seen, which is probably related to the first client's taste. Wedding dresses in particular are problematic, since you're going to want them to look white in anything formal (since the white is often the point of the dress), but you might elect a more naturalistic color balance for informals, depending on what styles are prevalent.

If you're shooting football, you might consider pushing the white balance to give night games one look, and day games another -- cooler and warmer, I suppose? I don't really know the color temp of the huge banks of stadium lights, though.

What's perfect? If your client knows and can articulate it, do that, regardless of what people on the internet say. If your client doesn't or can't, try to hit whatever the local market is doing. If that's still not enough, make it look however you think looks best.

I think you have some good points in there, but they tend to make me feel like you are still striving for a 'correct' white balance in every situation.
Let me explain: Slightly warm or cool or whatever your taste may be, you still would never put out blue, glowing orange or magenta skin tones. You aim for your whites that are in the consistent light to be white. The ones in the shade would be cool as would the opposite if you were shooting in the shade. You wouldn't take an image shot in the shade where the color is cool but has a background in the warm evening sun and make the shaded subject blue so that the background would be proper. Nor would you make the sun cool to match the tone of the subject. The sun would remain warm-or even warmer as you raise the color on your subject to be in range for proper skin tone. Will the skin tone be exactly the same as the subject's skin? Maybe to probably not. It'd be enough correct to not draw the eye thinking HOLY ORANGE DUDE or HOLY DEAD BODY!

In short I think you are right about obsessing about the white balance being slightly eggshell instead of pure is really unrealistic. As a matter of fact, many whites ARE a blue tint or a warm tint that we just don't notice unless we are able to and LOOKING for it. If you look at computer paper from several different manufacturers some will be blueish and some will be creamier. They're all white until you put them together in one report and compare.

However, that's not exactly how your post seemed. It seemed as if fixing things is kind of pointless overall when average people just plain don't see it. They may not consciously see a bad color, but they also know if something feels not right about it. It has to be within a tolerance for correct. The chances of us knowing that the person really was shaded in blues and should be blue are slim if we see a blue person.

Football, on the other hand is a whole different ballgame. Night games are a nightmare in a rainbow of color. Day games are easy if they are early, however if the sun is going down the color temp actually skyrockets for a while-BUT if I left it at say 7200K people would most definitely notice it is orange. I don't care so much about perfectly CORRECT as I care about LOOKING correct within a tolerance. A bank of football lights has a range from about 3200K to sometimes near 5000K and you can get everything in between in about one minute. Some are better than others.

The best is when you get them where different lights in the same stadium are on different cycles. So everything lit by the right side is blue, everything lit by the left side is orange, and everything lit by both sides is magenta or green.

 

[amolitor]

However, that's not exactly how your post seemed. It seemed as if fixing things is kind of pointless overall when average people just plain don't see it. They may not consciously see a bad color, but they also know if something feels not right about it. It has to be within a tolerance for correct. The chances of us knowing that the person really was shaded in blues and should be blue are slim if we see a blue person.

Well, I hope my followups clarified my thinking!

Certainly I agree that white balance can enter the realm of the unreal pretty easily, at which point I will certainly stop liking it, and probably lots of people will.

 

[MLeeK]

It depends on the client, to a large degree, and as a professional I am sure you're fully aware of catering to your client's tastes and desires. If the client is relatively sophisticated and shares modern tastes, you're going to get the whites pure white, you're going to push the contrast to ridiculous levels on any black and whites, you're probably going to either over saturate or under saturate, and if you undersaturate you're probably going to push contrast into the midtones.

If you're shooting for ME, you might choose a more naturalistic rendering of the whites, letting them look bluer in the shade and warmer in the sun, and warmer still indoors.

If you're shooting for a relatively unsophisticated bride, you're going to make your photographs look as much as possible like whatever her recently married friends are likely to have seen, which is probably related to the first client's taste. Wedding dresses in particular are problematic, since you're going to want them to look white in anything formal (since the white is often the point of the dress), but you might elect a more naturalistic color balance for informals, depending on what styles are prevalent.

If you're shooting football, you might consider pushing the white balance to give night games one look, and day games another -- cooler and warmer, I suppose? I don't really know the color temp of the huge banks of stadium lights, though.

What's perfect? If your client knows and can articulate it, do that, regardless of what people on the internet say. If your client doesn't or can't, try to hit whatever the local market is doing. If that's still not enough, make it look however you think looks best.

I think you have some good points in there, but they tend to make me feel like you are still striving for a 'correct' white balance in every situation.
Let me explain: Slightly warm or cool or whatever your taste may be, you still would never put out blue, glowing orange or magenta skin tones. You aim for your whites that are in the consistent light to be white. The ones in the shade would be cool as would the opposite if you were shooting in the shade. You wouldn't take an image shot in the shade where the color is cool but has a background in the warm evening sun and make the shaded subject blue so that the background would be proper. Nor would you make the sun cool to match the tone of the subject. The sun would remain warm-or even warmer as you raise the color on your subject to be in range for proper skin tone. Will the skin tone be exactly the same as the subject's skin? Maybe to probably not. It'd be enough correct to not draw the eye thinking HOLY ORANGE DUDE or HOLY DEAD BODY!

In short I think you are right about obsessing about the white balance being slightly eggshell instead of pure is really unrealistic. As a matter of fact, many whites ARE a blue tint or a warm tint that we just don't notice unless we are able to and LOOKING for it. If you look at computer paper from several different manufacturers some will be blueish and some will be creamier. They're all white until you put them together in one report and compare.

However, that's not exactly how your post seemed. It seemed as if fixing things is kind of pointless overall when average people just plain don't see it. They may not consciously see a bad color, but they also know if something feels not right about it. It has to be within a tolerance for correct. The chances of us knowing that the person really was shaded in blues and should be blue are slim if we see a blue person.

Football, on the other hand is a whole different ballgame. Night games are a nightmare in a rainbow of color. Day games are easy if they are early, however if the sun is going down the color temp actually skyrockets for a while-BUT if I left it at say 7200K people would most definitely notice it is orange. I don't care so much about perfectly CORRECT as I care about LOOKING correct within a tolerance. A bank of football lights has a range from about 3200K to sometimes near 5000K and you can get everything in between in about one minute. Some are better than others.

The best is when you get them where different lights in the same stadium are on different cycles. So everything lit by the right side is blue, everything lit by the left side is orange, and everything lit by both sides is magenta or green.

Dear, God... I have one of those. I am holding that one till last every week. I HATE IT!!! My family laughs as I sit here and mutter while processing the batch. Whenever we arrive at the field they say something to the effect of "here we go again... UGH" because they know they're going to have to deal with me! I can process 3 games in the time it takes me to process that damn field!

 

[Derrel]

On the other hand, I find the obsession which white balance annoying -- it's something that most people don't even see, but there's a cadre of people who have learned to see it, and have elevated it to like the third most important thing: God, Country, Rule of Thirds, White Balance (ok, 4th most important thing).

I lol'ed. And then nodded in agreement. How funny! Err...I mean, how tragically sad...

 

[amolitor]

Rent a really big cherry picker and gel those bad boys..

 

[MLeeK]

Rent a really big cherry picker and gel those bad boys..

I'd be better off if I could shove a set of strobes up in each bank of lights.

 

[photogod88]

That's all fine and well when you are shooting for personal reasons, but when you are selling to a client who is expecting perfect, then what is your take on it?

What do you think about these shots did it on spot no flash and corrected in DDR

 

[Graystar]

Your examples are good: Anywhere I can't get my gray card to easily or conveniently meter off of, and that includes some things that are too far away from me to make it practical, as well as restricted areas, like the inside of a lion cage, I often prefer the spot meter on the Sekonic to the one on board whichever digital camera body I'm using. Also I do use flash a lot, in multiple light setups that include plenty of modifiers, gels, reflectors, gobos, flags, flocking, and so on. I also still like to shoot film with my antique cameras, especially my MF cameras, and I use it religiously for that as well.

Okay...perfectly reasonable. Why do you prefer the Sekonic spot meter over the camera? Just the amount of information, or is there a performance or usability advantage that you prefer?

 

[fjrabon]

Your examples are good: Anywhere I can't get my gray card to easily or conveniently meter off of, and that includes some things that are too far away from me to make it practical, as well as restricted areas, like the inside of a lion cage, I often prefer the spot meter on the Sekonic to the one on board whichever digital camera body I'm using. Also I do use flash a lot, in multiple light setups that include plenty of modifiers, gels, reflectors, gobos, flags, flocking, and so on. I also still like to shoot film with my antique cameras, especially my MF cameras, and I use it religiously for that as well.

Okay...perfectly reasonable. Why do you prefer the Sekonic spot meter over the camera? Just the amount of information, or is there a performance or usability advantage that you prefer?

in camera light meters can't meter flash.

 

[Ysarex]

That's all fine and well when you are shooting for personal reasons, but when you are selling to a client who is expecting perfect, then what is your take on it?

What do you think about these shots did it on spot no flash and corrected in DDR

Welcome to TPF.

You haven't set your edit flag yet, I'm going to assume it's OK to show you a change, but let us know if you'd prefer "hands off" on your photos.

The photo of the young woman: it's tending flat and she has cyan highlights in her hair (see adjustment below). You're original post mentions struggling with WB. You got some good advice about setting a custom WB at the time the photo is taken. Given your statement that you'd prefer to avoid PP, then setting a custom WB is a necessary step -- auto WB does not work. The other option is to shoot raw and set the WB in post which you're saying you want to avoid. As this thread continued you also asked about exposure. Yes, Fred Parker is a waste of time. Considering the three photos you posted, I'd say your having some exposure problems due to high contrast ranges. Given the type of photos you're taking the only real efficient solution for that is flash. Flash also solves your WB problem. You need quality off camera flash hardware: it's either that or you will do the PP. Your camera has a feature you'll find under the Custom menu called HTP (highlight tone priority) which you might find helpful but it is a double edged sword.

Joe

 

[Buckster]

Your examples are good: Anywhere I can't get my gray card to easily or conveniently meter off of, and that includes some things that are too far away from me to make it practical, as well as restricted areas, like the inside of a lion cage, I often prefer the spot meter on the Sekonic to the one on board whichever digital camera body I'm using. Also I do use flash a lot, in multiple light setups that include plenty of modifiers, gels, reflectors, gobos, flags, flocking, and so on. I also still like to shoot film with my antique cameras, especially my MF cameras, and I use it religiously for that as well.

Okay...perfectly reasonable. Why do you prefer the Sekonic spot meter over the camera? Just the amount of information, or is there a performance or usability advantage that you prefer?

I meter flash with the incident dome, actually.

But in any case, I nearly always shoot from a tripod, even outdoors in pretty good light. When I get into a situation where I think the spot meter would be a better tool than the incident meter, I find that it's easier for the way I shoot to lock down my composition, then put the Sekonic to my eye and move around the scene to check out exposure values, rather than to move the camera around to get them. Sometimes that leads me to employ a graduated NDR or shoot bracketed exposures for later HDR work.

It's probably influenced heavily by working with film and meters for 30 years before I got into digital too. Old dog, old tricks, or something like that.

 

[Graystar]

A little thing that is about the size of a small cheeseburger, pops on and off the end of your lens is cumbersome? With an expo disc it takes me under a minute to white balance. Also, you just point your camera at the light source that will be hitting your subject? Not sure how that's particularly difficult?

With a grey card you either have to do stuff in post, after having your subject hold the card, or you have to make the card take up the full frame, which I've always found to lead to slight inaccuracies, since you're not shooting from the same angle you normally would.

I can understand not wanting to pay the money for an expodisc, but saying its 'cumbersome' is just unfathomable to me. Pros love expodiscs precisely because of how fast and non-cumbersome they are.

I used grey cards forever, until I started using an expo disc every day for work. After using an expodisc consistently on a day to day basis, it was hard to go back to grey cards, so I finally just bit the bullet and paid the money for my own personal one.

If the Expodisc works for you that's fine...I'm not saying that it doesn't work. It's just that in my personal opinion I think it's more cumbersome to use than a card.

I look at the usability issue from the perspective of walking around, say, a large museum, where every room has different lighting. I want to set a custom white balance quickly without having to unzip a pocket on my bag (or sometimes I don't even have my bag.) I guess I could carry an Expodisc in a front pocket...which it would have to share with a phone or keys. But carrying a card in the back pocket is easier than in a bag, and more comfortable than a front pocket.

I use a gray card that's 4"x6" and only 3mm thick...it fits in my back pocket and I don't even feel it back there. As I have a Nikon, it literally takes me less than 10 seconds to set a custom white balance. I hold the WB button for two seconds to initiate the WB procedure, whip out the card from my back pocket, face it towards the light (or if there are two light sources, held to catch both,) and then frame the card and press the shutter. I don't even look through the camera...I just put the lens directly on the card, careful not to block the light. Then the card goes back in my pocket and I'm ready to shoot. It's fast, easy, indestructible, and works every time. The card was only 15 bucks and can be "refreshed" with sandpaper should it get dirty.

I'm sure the Expodisc works well...I simply don't see what advantage I get by spending 5 times as much, and always having to point in some other direction into the light source to set my white balance. And what do you do with two light sources? If you don't point the Expodisc directly at the source, the color from the area that you are pointing at may influence the white balance setting. I don't have that problem with a card. It's for these reasons that I never recommend the Expodisc. But like I said...it's just a personal evaluation...one person's opinion.

 

[Graystar]

What do you think about these shots did it on spot no flash and corrected in DDR

Girl by window...way off. Too blue.
In car...clear green cast.
Third shot...ever so slight green cast...but willing to call "nitpicking" on that evaluation and declare the WB good.

 

[Graystar]

in camera light meters can't meter flash.

Yes, I think we're all aware of that. But Buckster stated he would use handheld spot metering to meter the lion's cage over the camera. That's what I was referring to.