Setting WB by temp?

Are there some good guidelines to set the custom WB by temperature for various conditions? Like sunny, shade, cloudy etc?

There are lots of charts on the web. Here is one of them...


https://www.freestylep​hoto.biz/color-temperature-chart

Thanks!

My search didn't turn up a chart as clear as that.

I have not tried setting my own WB temperature very often. Sometimes the Cloudy setting seems off a bit. Admittedly, it is hard to say for sure as I am a bit color blind...!

For example, the first photo on a very overcast day was with auto WB, the second is set to Cloudy

Every camera has presets for various conditions, but the Kelvin temps they use are usually a little different. I shoot raw so I can see the actual Kelvin value which makes it easier to standardize a group of shots. I believe my Canon uses 6500k for cloudy which I find a bit warm. It may be accurate, but that's not how I remember the scene. As long as your monitor is calibrated, you can just adjust to taste. I usually just leave it on "sunny" and adjust in Lightroom.

If you're really interested in presets, you'll find resources for determining each brand's K value with every preset. I've had to match Canon and Nikon, and have found that dialing the the same K value does produce pretty identical colors.

I too shoot RAW and will switch from as shot to auto and more often than not, it's what I want.

Those choices also change the magenta/green slider.

I don't usually try using the slider, I'll just decide if I want warmer or cooler and experiment with numbers punched in

Canon has a 3-page discussion on white balance that includes the color temps for their preset conditions. See https://cpn.canon-europe.com …_balance/white_​balance.do

There is also a good discussion (with chart) at http://www.bobatkins.c​om …ce_color_temper​ature.html

Thank you for the links. Good information there.

I went out to the backyard and shot a couple of flower shots in RAW (I usually shot sports in JPEG) just to play around with the WB setting on the RAW processor. It is helpful to see how the photo changes as you progress through the different temperatures.

If you really want to set your own white balance, keep one of these in your bag. It packs up small and it takes all of the guesswork out of setting white balance.

I do need to get a grey card!

duckster wrote in post #18896863
I do need to get a grey card!

Explore some options...see https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=271142

If you have a quality printer, you can download and print an acceptable 18% gray card at http://www.workwithcol​or.com/gray-card-6475.htm. I had it printed on a calibrated PIXMA Pro-100 to a very white high quality paper then went to a Hobby Lobby and came very close with card stock that cost 75¢. Doing some image comparisons with a Kodak 18% card, the printed gray card, and the Hobby Lobby card card shows very subtle differences when compared. Fine for me in doing landscape stuff.

John from PA wrote in post #18896878
Explore some options...see https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=271142

Post #6 of that thread mentions the use of coffee filter over the lens, similar to the use of the ExpoDisc. I had previously done comparisons of a number of different gray card targets (the brand name ones all had very similar results) various informally chosen printer papers vs. glossy photo paper (the glossy photo paper best matched the grey card for WB setting), and some time later I got curious about the use of a coffee filter.

The gray card resulted in 2950K value for White Balance with indoor lighting for the test. With lens aimed upward toward the light source, however the Melita coffee filter was surprising discontinuous in its density! The Melita was not too far off from the true gray card result, but the White Balance value varied a good amount based upon where on the image one selected for the eyedropper tool, from 2800K-2950K. I'd say it is good enough for most purposes (better, in fact, than a randomly chosen piece of printer paper which I have tested to be as much as 600 degrees in error!), but I am nevertheless disturbed by the non-uniformity in balance and tonality even with a defocused lens image...I put it in the 'better than nothing at all guess' and better than randomly chosen printer paper for WB determination.

I have used the whitish gray lid that came off coffee cans or drink mix cans before and those seen to be pretty good. But I didn't put it over the lens, I would fill the frame with it out of focus and set the wb from that.

The problem with setting a fixed WB outdoors is that the light will vary - sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly if there are lots of clouds etc.

My solution is to use Auto White Balance, and tweak afterwards in Lightroom.
However, I appreciate that this may not be so practical if you're shooting large volumes of images in JPEG.

With fixed lighting (i.e. indoors) I use a whibal or other grey card for a test image in whatever light setup is being used. I still stick with AWB, though.