White Balance - Auto, Custom or Other?

[snerd]

I ask because, reading Bryan Peterson's book, he says he "always" shoots on "Cloudy" to add warmth to his shots. Of course, he also says he can change that post if needed. Does anyone else subscribe to this preference?

 

[Ysarex86 80]

No. I subscribe to dropping Petersen's book in the dumpster which is exactly what I did with the copy I picked up.

Either set a custom white balance or plan to get it adjusted during raw conversion.

Joe

 

[480sparky41 40]

I shoot in Auto unless I'm working with known, controlled lighting. Then I shoot custom.

Shooting raw gives me the ability to change/adjust the WB in post if it's not right.

 

[snerd]

Yes, I almost always use Auto. His method seemed strange to me, but I'm a noob so what do I know?!

 

[Big Mike]

If you shoot raw, it's not too much of an issue because you can change it afterward without problem.

But if you shoot JPEG, then it is much more important.

I find that the Auto WB works pretty well in most cases, but can easily be tricked. The easy alternative is to choose one of the preset WB settings to match the light that you are in.

The 'best' way to get proper WB, is to create a custom WB for the lighting scenario that you are in. It's not hard to do, you just need a color neutral surface to shoot...and you have to know how to set it on your camera.

 

[hirejn]

WB is subjective. But no I tend to match the setting to the light, i.e. daylight to daylight, not cloudy. I'd rather make creative temperature decisions in post, which takes about two seconds to apply to a thousand images in LR. Joel Nisleit Photography | What White Balance to Use

 

[weepete]

Generally I shoot raw and AWB. If I'm shooting Jpegs I'll do a custom one unless I'm trying to shoot candids or the light is changing a lot.

 

[bratkinson]

I shoot in RAW+JPG, so I have my bases covered.

As for in-camera WB (affects JPGs, not RAW), I've used grey cards, Expodisk, and Xrite Color Checker, and setting it specifically as daylight, incandescent, etc in the camera. That got to the point of driving me nuts as I had to continually change settings as I moved from lighting situation to lighting situation at church events. The one that drove me wild was an area lit mostly with florescent lights with incandescent wall sconces and even a couple of LED spot lights. I tried setting the camera to florescent, then daylight, then incandescent, you name it, all without success. Even using a grey card under the florescents and setting Custom WB to that failed as florescents change colors 60 times per second. I ultimately gave up fighting an uphill battle and set it to AWB. That worked pretty well on my 60D. Obviously, AWB outdoors works fantastic. Under 'plain vanilla' incandescents, it works well, too. Everything else...pretty close..except those florescents. So when I wanted to use JPGs to save post processing time, I'd use the RAWs for those shot under the florescents and set WB picture by picture, often using any white thing in the picture...shirt sleeves, table cloths, white polka dots in a dress, you name it, then a small tweak from there. Then export them as JPGs to my JPG folder. In short, I've decided that when I'm shooting in a fixed lighting environment, if I really want to be picky about the WB, I'll use the Xrite Color Checker or the grey card and set it in post. Otherwise, it's AWB and fix what I have to.

But then, I upgraded to a 5D3 last November. AWB all the way...baby. Even under the crazy florescents, the 5D3 AWB is astoundingly accurate! And for the couple of shots here and there the AWB got tricked, I fix those in post. Needless to say, my grey card and Xrite stay home more often than not these days.

And for those shoots or parts thereof I want or need the extra flexibility of using RAW files, I set the WB to white shirts, ties, etc in the picture, and then use the Synchronize feature in Lightroom for that series of shots until I started shooting in another area/lighting.

Bottom line, amateur that I am, I've gotten more and more lazy regarding WB. 'Close enough' is good enough for my purposes and even the free prints and CDs I provide are far better quality than the people in the pictures were expecting as most people are content with cell-phone pix these days. So a real DSLR photo knocks their socks off. Should I ever be foolish enough to take a job for pay, I'll certainly break out the Color Checker and get every shot 'dead on WB'.

 

[Solarflare]

I shoot raw.

I check in post which works best.

Except if the light is REALLY ugly. Then I use a white sheet of paper to set the balance explicitly.

Then again, I mostly shoot news-style photos ... so I dont need "perfect colors", like other people, just close enough colors.

 

[Yzerwing]

I always just use the appropriate setting for the light I am shooting in. Day light for Daylight and so on. I have never had a problem with white balance I look at a couple of shots as I take them and if its consistent with the scene I just shot than its all good. I don't even know how to set a custom WB or what its for (newb also) it hasn't been a problem for me. I suppose it depends on what you are shooting.

 

[Murray Bloom]

AWB has a major drawback. It adjusts the WB to the color of the subject. It does this in much the same way that auto exposure is always adjusting to 18% reflectance. If your subject is predominantly red, AWB will crank in some cyan, trying to make the image overall gray. The same is true of all the other color wheel opposites, C-R, M-G, Y-B, R-C, G-M, and B-Y.

In virtually all cases, setting custom color balance will yield the most faithful results in-camera. However, in the real world, AWB and the preset modes are a lot quicker to use if you're a .jpg shooter. As has been stated, if you shoot RAW, you can adjust color temperature in your RAW converter.

 

[KmH]

White Balance - Auto, Custom or Other?

Yes. Which ever is appropriate for the situation and your artistic goals for the shot.

For a lot of on location portraits I gelled my strobes to the color temperature of tungsten/incandescent light and set the WB to tungsten, that makes the light on my subject look like sunlight (white), but makes the background sunlight cool (a light blue color cast in the background.)