What white balance setting for late afternoon shots

[maderito]

My first post - so bear with me. Another white balance query for the 10D...

My understanding is that setting white balance determines what colors become neutral. But, if I shoot late in the day, hoping for a warmish tonality, I don't necessarily want to remove the yellow/red cast. Ditto for an available light shot with tungsten lighting (which I might want to partially, but not completely correct). So how to do I set the white balance if I'm processing a RAW file (with the PS plugin)? Do I just trust my eyes to fiddle with the WB until the image looks the way I want? Do exprienced folks develop a "feel" for what the WB should be in certain settings? Perhaps I am missing something, but setting an "accurate" WB (i.e. neutralizing white/grey) would seem to remove the very thing you've tried to capture in certain shooting situations.

Incidentally, it's late fall in my neighborhood, and the AWB ("as shot" when processing RAW) doesn't seem to do a good job - perhaps understandable with all of the vivid, warm colors in outdoor shots.

[robertwgross]

You know how to set up a custom white balance using a white card? If the card is pure white, then that tells the camera what should be pure white.

Stop and think what would happen if you do the custom white balance with a card that is blue pastel or pink pastel or yellow pastel.

In each case, you will get a custom color shift to the color opposite the card color. So, you can make your scene appear more pink or more yellow than it really was.

---Bob Gross---

[slin100]

It seems like you want to imitate the performance of daylight film. In that case, you should set your WB to Daylight.

[maderito]

robertwgross wrote:
Stop and think what would happen if you do the custom white balance with a card that is blue pastel or pink pastel or yellow pastel.

---Bob Gross---

Bob -

I'm thinking :). Correcting WB to a cool, cyan card warms the image; setting to a pink card gives you a cooler image. I've heard of such cards ... do you know where I can find them?

Thanks.

[scollins]

I've heard of such cards ... do you know where I can find them?

Thanks.

Would a card like this work? It's a gray card from B&H for $2.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=231564&is=REG

[robertwgross]

A gray card should produce the exact same results as a white card, as far as color balance is concerned. The gray card will produce different results from the white card for exposure tests, but that is not what we are doing here.

White balancing to a cyan card should produce warm results, and white balancing to an orange card should produce cool results.

---Bob Gross---

[EXA1a]

I guess you're looking for something like this:

http://www.warmcards.com/

--Jens--

[Jyoti]

I *think* I follow what effect you're after.

When I want a warmer tone, I select either the cloudy or shade setting on the 10D. Works for me! It sometimes makes things look a bit '70s Kodachrome but I like that effect.

(It's a completely inaccurate representation of the colours, of course. But that's where art vs. science comes in.)

[rdenney]

maderito wrote:
My first post - so bear with me. Another white balance query for the 10D...

My understanding is that setting white balance determines what colors become neutral. But, if I shoot late in the day, hoping for a warmish tonality, I don't necessarily want to remove the yellow/red cast. Ditto for an available light shot with tungsten lighting (which I might want to partially, but not completely correct). So how to do I set the white balance if I'm processing a RAW file (with the PS plugin)? Do I just trust my eyes to fiddle with the WB until the image looks the way I want? Do exprienced folks develop a "feel" for what the WB should be in certain settings? Perhaps I am missing something, but setting an "accurate" WB (i.e. neutralizing white/grey) would seem to remove the very thing you've tried to capture in certain shooting situations.

Incidentally, it's late fall in my neighborhood, and the AWB ("as shot" when processing RAW) doesn't seem to do a good job - perhaps understandable with all of the vivid, warm colors in outdoor shots.



I've read the other responses, and they are valid. But remember that if you don't want to try to nail down the white balance at shooting time, you can set it to auto and then shoot RAW. In raw mode, you can change the white balance when you convert to TIFF, and this allows you to preview the result.

Rick "who likes this aspect of RAW better than any other" Denney

[MiG82]

I've found that daylight WB gives a good representation of sunsets.
Are there any raw conversion programs that allow you to partially correct WB? For example, my eyes can see that tungsten lighting is yellowish and I like this colour. I do not want to make it a sterile white with the tungsten WB. Nor do I want the crazy orange that you get without WB. I want, lets say, only 80% WB correction.

[defordphoto]

Woody-

Yes, this is where shooting RAW really shines and is the only option, in my opinion. Why mess with cards when you can just take the shot and then adjust the settings later?

The nice thing with RAW is that you can change most settings to whatever you want. And there's no 'correct' way to do it. Just find the setting YOU like and set it.

You may look back and that shot a few months later and decide on a different WB setting with a combination of other settings.

That's the beauty of shooting RAW.

[maderito]

Thanks for the all the helpful suggetions.

A point of clarification:

I WAS shooting in RAW in order to have the flexibility of changing WB. I was looking for guidance on how to select the appropriate WB to simulate (or preserve) late afternoon color. I agree in general -- for important shots, do it in RAW.

However, I normally shoot jpegs, so the advice on using the 10D's custom WB and colored cards (light blue to warm images, pinkish to cool images) was very useful.

I looked at an interesting site suggested by Jens: http://www.warmcards.com/digital_camera.html . I was amused by the elaborate extent someone has gone through in order to sell "a white balance reference system" over the internet. However, the site was informative. For $45, you can have their version of selected cards to warm, cool, or otherwise color adjust your images. I'm not a cheapo -- but $45 seemed stiff for a set of colored cards!

I decided to make my own warm cards:

1. Shot a white card (actually, canon photo paper) on a New England sunny morning - in RAW of course.
2. Adjusted the white balance (temperature value) of the image in photoshop using Adobe Camera Raw until the R/W/B histograms overlapped perfectly (almost). The temperature read 4950. The tint was -45.
3. Saved that image to a tiff file.
4. Took the same raw file and changed the color temp to "cloudy" = 6500K. Moved the tint lever to duplicate the setting of the original shot.
5. Save the second file.
6. Reduced image size of both files to something manageable: 256 X 256 px. Created layers of each image in the same PS file (6500K image on top) and set the blending mode to "difference".
7. The resulting image is a shade of black. Copied that blackish image to another layer and inverted it to give a bluish image - my first warm card.
8. Using levels, adjusted white point (in RGB channel) to achieve Blue=255. Recorded the values for Red and Green.
9. Then adjusted the black point slider to give a series of values of Red from 210 to 255, keeping Blue constant at 255 with the white point slider. Recorded the green values.
10. Analyzed the results, and found the following formula for my blue card series:

Blue = 255 (constant)
Green = .273 x Red + 180

Giving a series of blue cards with values of:

R G B
235 245 255
230 244 255
225 242 255
220 241 255
215 240 255
210 238 255
205 237 255
200 236 255
195 234 255
190 233 255
185 231 255
180 230 255
175 229 255

The logic of my method was to get a set of gradations of Red and Blue (warm and cool) while finding an appropriate intermediate green. That's why I adjusted the temperature in CameraRaw (which mostly changes red/blue relationship) and kept the tint constant (which seemed to balance the green appropriately).

Printed off some cards with Red = 215, 225, 235 on a Canon i950 printer using matte paper.

I think I have my own warm cards, I've saved $45, I learned a lot, and I had some fun. Your results may vary ;) I've used them already and the results seem to give the warmth I was looking for while shooting jpegs and using the custom WB function on the 10D.

[defordphoto]

Wow. And now we thank you! Great info there.

[mlfrancis]

Call me cheap, but another tip I read somewhere and have used it instead of using the colored photo cards, use the larger paint sample cards that can be picked up at any Lowes, Home Depot, Wal-Fart, and anywhere else that sells paint. They are free. You can get various shades usually on single cards. Did I mention they were free?

I didn't see this tip mentioned in this thread, but I did just skim it so if it has been mentioned... call me something other than cheap. haha

Happy shooting,

[openspace]

mig82 wrote:
Are there any raw conversion programs that allow you to partially correct WB?

Check out C1DSLR - www.phaseone.com (which is down (?) right now). It lets you finitely control and adjust white balance on the fly before conversion. And it's lightning fast.