White balance issue

[mommy22]

I have a white balance issue! I set my white balance everytime I change scenes etc to the appropriate setting but it seems that most of my pics have a yellow/jaundiced look to them...should I leave the white balance on auto? I use the incandescent setting most as I shoot mostly indoors right now...I don't have a grey card yet, but may go get one this week...that's a whole different thread question though lol...

 

[Overread]

Have you considered shifting to shoot in RAW mode? That would let you adjust the white balance of a shot after you take it in editing. Whilst this will be subjective (based on your own eyes viewing of colour and on if your computer monitor is itself calibrated using a hardware based calibration setup - like a Spyder 3) it will be a good saftey buffer to also setting your own white balance - should something go wrong (or say you move from one situation to another very quickly and fail to change the white balance)

 

[dhilberg]

On my D80 I just leave it on auto white balance about 99% of the time. It's usually pretty accurate, except under incandescent lighting. It ends up being way too warm. In that situation I shoot the scene with a gray card in it, and adjust the WB in post with the gray dropper in Levels. Although it still ends up just a touch too warm, so I will cool it down a bit.

I've also found that under heavy overcast skies the D80's auto WB tends to be too cool. I just adjust it in Adobe Camera Raw to my liking.

If you don't have a gray card, you can set a custom white balance with a white piece of paper instead (see the manual). That will get you pretty close, and you can fine tune it in post.

 

[Pugs]

If you shoot in RAW (which I see from another thread that you're trying to move to), leave the camera in auto and the adjust the white balance in post-processing.

 

[Big Mike]

Is your monitor calibrated?

 

[Nikkor]

I just about always use my auto WB setting. It's the only automatic setting I use. Mine's pretty dead on I'd say 98% of the time.

 

[JButler]

Auto WB really isn't bad on most cameras. I only switch it to manual in certain situations. And yes, shooting raw makes adjusting WB after the photo trivial.

 

[IgsEMT]

I'm not a huge fan of AWB. Especially indoors, I find more errors the accuracy.
Grey cards are cheap. Shooting RAW is another choice.
If using a flash, indoors/outdoors I keep WB at 5500-5600K or Daylight+A2.

 

[photobazz]

Using a grey card will help with your white balance but if you want to get really accurate colours then I would use a color checker chart like the X-rite Colorchecker Passport. I've used it for colour correction and it very good. If you use Photoshop or Lightroom like I do it makes colour correcting your images a breeze. It's relatively cheap too.

Obviously if you do shoot raw as long as you have a calibrated monitor then you can correct most colour casts. It's important to have a monitor that is calibrated otherwise what you see might not be accurate.

I would suggest trying to correct it in camera as much as you can though first for quicker workflow.

Watford Wedding photographer

 

[TJ K]

Why don't you try auto wb and see how that works?s

 

[stefanderson]

How about trying 'preset manual WB'? Capture an image of something white, like some printer paper, in the same light you are going to be shooting in.