White Balance / Gray Card and Landscape Photography

Divemaster · Jul 5, 2012

Hey everyone, I have been working on dialing in the proper white balance when taking photos, but I have really only used the presets that are available in my camera. I have the ability to customize white balance on my camera, but would need to use a gray card. My question is pertaining to landscapes, I can see the use of a gray card when taking a portrait photo and etc, but when I take a picture of a sunrise/set or the water, should I incorporate a gray card and go through the custom process or just use the preset?

Thanks for your help!

Matt

unpopular · Jul 5, 2012

you are way over complicating matters.

fjrabon · Jul 5, 2012

The issue with landscapes is that you usually want your landscapes to be a little bit warmer than neutral. I find it's usually best to just adjust my white balance in post to taste for the shot when it comes to landscapes.

ceejtank · Jul 5, 2012

As long as the histogram has the picture properly exposed, I do everything post processing. I agree with both posts above me.

Big Mike · Jul 5, 2012

Shoot in RAW, adjust to taste later.

unpopular · Jul 5, 2012

There was a time when you pretty much had to pick between two white balances - 5000K and around 3000K. While sure, you had CC filters, to really make use of them you;d need a $1,000+ color meter. Very few used them, even fewer would have used them for landscapes.

Now that you can dial-o-filter, people get all worked up over white balance and color temperatures.

I just pretty much shoot everything at 5000K or 3000K just so I can get a remotely accurate histogram, and as mike says, adjust it later.

fjrabon · Jul 5, 2012

Yeah, the only time when you really need to particularly worry about using a grey card is when you have to get the color balance exactly right. This is almost never the case in landscape, and in fact usually you're going to intentionally warm the picture and actually get the white balance wrong by a little bit.

This isn't the case for all types of photography, like portraits usually need a dead on white balance. interiors usually need a dead on white balance so the colors are rendered accurately. But even then it's usually just easier to take a shot of the grey card and then fix it in post processing. Some things are easier to fix in the camera than they are in post, I generally find white balance is not one of them.

unpopular · Jul 5, 2012

"Dead on" is a bit of an exaggeration.

fjrabon · Jul 5, 2012

unpopular said:
"Dead on" is a bit of an exaggeration.

depends. For real estate, it's absolutely not an exaggeration. It's one of the few things that the agent really cares about. Portraits, it sort of a judgment call. With people who I don't know extremely well, I usually feel that a grey card is extremely useful. There's nothing worse than sitting there in post trying to remember exactly what their skin tone was like. Especially for people of latin or asian descent, because white balance can really throw their skin tones, and those ethnicities vary a bit. Like Koreans, I can never really nail their skin tone without a grey card. It's not the same as Japanese people or even Chinese people, and some get really upset about their skin tones being like a different ethnicity. It's a very subtle difference that white people have a hard time picking up on, but people of asian descent can notice immediately.

For like a random white girl, yeah, usually you can eyeball it and get it close enough.

But I mean there are pro photogs who obsess about whether or not their white reflectors are truly neutral and will tell you it's absolutely necessary for portraits. For them, any portrait would have to bead dead on white balance wise.

unpopular · Jul 5, 2012

how long again have you been taking photos? because sometimes I swear to god you post the weirdest stuff.

fjrabon · Jul 5, 2012

unpopular said:
how long again have you been taking photos? because sometimes I swear to god you post the weirdest stuff.

I've taken portraits of koreans who got upset because I missed their skin tone, they literally told me that I made them look japanese. Luckily it didn't take but a couple of seconds to fix once they were in front of me and I could see their skin right there. But going off memory without a grey card prior to that, I thought I had it, but close enough wasn't good enough.

Jesus Christ, you act like using a grey card for a portrait is the most unheard of thing ever? I mean from looking at your photos, do you even shoot portraits, I haven't seen any? I've mostly seen random shots of doors, which of course the white balance isn't going to be particularly important there.

Yes, plenty of people obsess about white balance. It's why grey cards exist in the first place. That's weird?

edit: and just for the purpose of illustration, Korean skin tones are slightly more yellow, and Japanese skin tones are slightly more blue/grey (or maybe I reversed that, crap, I don't know, I guess that's why I use a grey card). I had never really noticed that at the time. Especially some older Koreans or Japanese will get very upset if you mess this up.

unpopular · Jul 5, 2012

No. It's not unheard of, I'm not saying that. I'd probably use one for a portrait, but only as a starting point.

It's more the "dead on" line. There is plenty of room in portraits to work with and still remain natural, you're not bound to neutral color cast, no matter what race the model is.

unpopular · Jul 5, 2012

Oh. and BTW, I haven't seen much from you either.

fjrabon · Jul 5, 2012

unpopular said:
No. It's not unheard of, I'm not saying that. I'd probably use one for a portrait, but only as a starting point.

It's more the "dead on" line. There is plenty of room in portraits to work with and still remain natural, you're not bound to neutral color cast, no matter what race the model is.

I really don't get what point you're trying to make. My point was that certain types of photography, white balance is important enough that you probably need a grey card. How strictly you want to interpret 'dead on' to mean is kind of a really unimportant side point. It's like arguing how sharp is sharp enough and how sharp is too much.

I can tell you I've had agents, when I first started doing real estate, who would tell me that I made the shade of paint eggshell, when it should have been off white. I can tell you I've done portraits where trying to get the skin tones right off memory didn't go so well. That was my only point.

Also, I apologize to the OP for hijacking the thread, I have no idea how unpopular always manages to drag things into completely unimportant tangential arguments.