White Balance Question

[JFPhotography]

What is the proper (or suggested) setting for the white balance when you're shooting at night in low light. For example, I took this shot below on Saturday night along the Danube River in Regensburg, Germany. ISO 100 - 30 second shutter speed - f7.1 - 18mm. I had the White Balance on the Daylight setting because I was unsure on what it really should be for night photography. Thank you in advance everyone for your help and advice.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Hi there,
I´d strongly recommend to shoot raw for night photography. The street lights have become so extremely different due to LED, etc. that you can´t really say what you should use best. Not even a greycard helps much. So it is best to set the white balance on the computer and probably create some local adjustments for specific lamps when they are way off.

 

[photo1x1.com]

BTW: if you want other to give your image a try and show what you can do with it, you´d have change your forum setting to "Photos OK to edit".

 

[JFPhotography]

Thanks, I changed the setting to ok to edit. I do shoot everything in RAW. I was just wondering because there isn't really any kind of setting for nighttime white balance, etc...

 

[Designer]

.. there isn't really any kind of setting for nighttime white balance, etc...

The problem is that artificial lighting comes in many different colors, and some that change color continually (although not noticeable with the human eye). Camera engineers know this, and have apparently decided that it would be poor guess-work to try to arrive at a WB setting that would work universally.

Besides; the WB setting in your camera is for the JPG files only, and has nothing to do with the Raw files.

While you are editing your Raw file, try to pick a WB that yields "natural-looking" colors in the buildings or whatever you have there. I don't know about Photoshop, but there might be a way to set a different WB for each part of the photograph that is lighted differently.

 

[photo1x1.com]

Thanks, I changed the setting to ok to edit. I do shoot everything in RAW. I was just wondering because there isn't really any kind of setting for nighttime white balance, etc...

Here´s a quick try - on top the original, below I have tried to set different white balances for different lights. And masked them out in photoshop. Not a perfect edit, but enough to give you an idea.

 

[KmH]

Understanding White Balance

 

[JFPhotography]

Thank you all!

 

[OGsPhotography]

I think the answer is Auto, because you are in Raw and can adjust in post. In canon it says AWB.

 

[adamhiram]

I often like the exaggerated colors you get from a night time long exposure. Setting it to daylight (5500K) will probably give you the closest approximation to what your eyes saw, but you may want to tweak in post to achieve the desired effect, depending on whether you want to try to adjust everything to look like white light, have a specific color cast to add a particular mood to the photo, or even to control what the sky or other components look like.

 

[Gary A.]

... Or you can just convert to B&W.