Coming out of the WB closet

[Alexei TND]

Ok ill be the first to admit it, im not sure why so many people try so very hard to get the most "real" colour spectrum from camera. Maybe its just a personal preference but i LOVE it when photos have a golden sunsetesque light, so my WB is very often set to Shade or even Kelvin pushed to the extreme red.
Indoors its another story i guess, even i have a limit to how warm a photo is ( i hate light bulbs xD) , but for outdoor photography i like my shade :D

IF i have a photo where i NEED the most accurate colours possible then i can anyway correct it easily enough in PS, but in 3 years of shooting and well over 200K pics on my HD i can honestly say i only had to do this 3 or 4 times

Am i the only one who feels this way?

[DStanic]

I also like to make my images slightly warmer looking sometimes. Shade/cloudy does this effect well. I think Bryan Peterson even mentions in one of his books that he likes to use the cloudy setting for WB.

[neilwood32]

That is one of the beautys of shooting RAW all the time - you can freely choose which WB suits the image best (not just the "correct" one).

Using the "correct" WB can be useful in certain circumstances - product photography, cars etc but the "correct" setting isnt always the best one.

I have used this quite a few times to add a feel to an image.

[Metalstrm]

I agree to a certain extent. In general I find that it's better to err slightly on the warm side than on the cooler, especially when there's people involved. Some stuff, however, especially commercial/product photography does need, or is expected to, contain the correct colors.

Keep in mind also that the correct color balance also involves setting the hue in the green/magenta range. The greenish fluorescent cast does need to be corrected each time.

[Alexei TND]

Fair points on the product photography. Never really did that so maybe that helped nurture my gold light fetish
Some of the best landscape pix ive seen here have interesting colours, to quote a canon mag: a good photo shows the world as it is, a great photo shows you the world in ways youve never seen before

[PhotosGuy]

Regarding WB generally, reality isn't everything. Would we try to make a sunset neutral? The "Correct" WB may not be the "Right" WB for a image. Remember, you're the judge of your own image. We used to use gels to add "romance" to our car shots for ad agencies. so my WB is very often set to Shade or even Kelvin pushed to the extreme red. If you like the effect, then OK. But if you need to correct later, Curtis N found that a blown red channel is a problem:
How NOT to expose to the right (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=93712)
I've seen that problem when I forgot to at least set a CB pre-set, & I'm not convinced that I can bring everything back into balance with RAW processing.

[Alexei TND]

blown reds are a problem. Got to shoot a few concerts recently an in one show they had spectacularly horrible lights
Very saturated reds n greens, there it dint matter what wb preset i had or what i tried with the raw files. The blue channel was practically nonexistant ><

[Metalstrm]

Yes, It has been mentioned before. If there was no blue light in the original light, of course there will be no blue light in the raw files. You could try whitebalancing as much as you want, but you cannot create a channel out of no information. All you'll be able to do is to push the noise way up. I'd rather just try and obtain a balance by eye in those cases.

[tzalman]

Yes, It has been mentioned before. If there was no blue light in the original light, of course there will be no blue light in the raw files. You could try whitebalancing as much as you want, but you cannot create a channel out of no information. All you'll be able to do is to push the noise way up. I'd rather just try and obtain a balance by eye in those cases.
Did you ever notice that tungsten lit shots are noisier than sunlight shots at the same ISO? Thats because the blue element is weak in tungsten light plus the fact that the sensor is less sensitive to blue anyways so the WB gives the blue channel a big noisey smack.

[Alexei TND]

Did you ever notice that tungsten lit shots are noisier than sunlight shots at the same ISO? Thats because the blue element is weak in tungsten light plus the fact that the sensor is less sensitive to blue anyways so the WB gives the blue channel a big noisey smack.

noticed this too
the only way i was able to halfway salvage the shot is to PP it so extensively and artificially add blue light elements that it probably already dwelt into photomanipulation more than just photography with standard PP
If the shot wasnt for a client i probably wouldnt bother with all the hassle seeing as other bands had much better lighting
but they wanted a few shots from every band so didnt have much choice there

but for landscape work and genereal outdoor natural light photography id rather have warm than accurate wb :D