uncovering white balance

[camera obscura]

I've been reading Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. What a great book. It's finally got me offa my ass to use the M mode. I was living in A (Aperture) mode for quite awhile.

Anyway, I've been trying different white balances, even though they are not supposed to be used in a certain situation (ie. using Cloudy indoors). I was wondering if anyone has a favorite white balance and when do you use it?

WB - Incandescent


DSC_0100-Edit by mpg23, on Flickr

WB -Cloudy


DSC_0103-Edit by mpg23, on Flickr

 

[tirediron]

What ever one gives me the effect I want.

 

[camera obscura]

What ever one gives me the effect I want.

In other words, practice, practice, practice. :thumbup:

I was kind of looking for some examples like florescent in the bathroom but I guess I'll just have to experiment for myself.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I generally, have it set to auto, and correct in Lightroom.

It can also be used as a tool to give you a different color effect to an image rather than going for "correct" white balance. Change it to what looks good, or right to you, or for a different effect.

 

[Overread35]

I generally, have it set to auto, and correct in Lightroom.

It can also be used as a tool to give you a different color effect to an image rather than going for "correct" white balance. Change it to what looks good, or right to you, or for a different effect.

+1 this is generally how I approach white balance - however if you want to take record shots or something or have a shoot where colour accuracy is important its best to learn about two things;

1) Manual white balance - because then you can set the white balance in the field and know that the colours are correct

2) light colour temperatures - essentially not all light is the same colour and even when it seems like its the same colour our eyes can fool us into not seeing this change since our vision is adaptive. Mostly you're fine with manual white balance provided that you've got a single light source in your shots or if you have more than one that only one of those light sources is dominant
ie if you have a lightbulb and a flash and you made the flash dominant your exposure without the flash (and thus just the lightbulb) would be black or very near to black - but with the flash it would be a proper exposure. Thus the lightbulb whilst present is not contributing to the light in the exposure whilst the dominant flash is).

However if the balance was more even you would have to use colour gels on the flash to adjust the flash light to the same temperature as the lightbulb



Also when it comes to white balance and colour having a colour calibrated monitor is a very big advantage and some might say essential to ensuring that the whole process works smoothly. Otherwise colour casts on your monitor (that you might not see because of our adaptive vision) will affect your shots. Something like a Spyder 3 can be used to calibrate your monitor.