White Balance... your philosophy?

Most dSLRs are simply horrible when it comes to white balance for indoor photos. A quick look at pbase, flickr, and other online galleries show that most indoor photos shot without flash have a horrible yellow tint to them.

Which brings me to a question for photographers in this forum...

When you take photos indoors under natural lighting (no flash), what is your white balance philosophy during post-processing:

Option #1:
Try to make a white dress look white, and flesh tone looking natural. That's probably how our brains interpret colors in these situations. A white dress is perceived as "white" regardless of the type of lighting used.

Option #2:
Or keep a white dress looking yellow and flesh tone looking orange as it would under incandescent light. That's probably the most accurate way of recreating a scene the way it really was.

The option you should have is "it depends". Some shots might work with the "mood" while others don't. This is one reason shooting RAW for me is the only way to go. While I don't shoot weddings I usually have a lot of different lighting conditions and changing settings between each shot isn't possible. So during Post processing I might group similar shots together and apply a global WB adjustment to a group.

Muggles wrote in post #3074275
Option #1:
Try to make a white dress look white, and flesh tone looking natural. That's probably how our brains interpret colors in these situations. A white dress is perceived as "white" regardless of the type of lighting used.

Option #2:
Or keep a white dress looking yellow and flesh tone looking orange as it would under incandescent light. That's probably the most accurate way of recreating a scene the way it really was.

I voted number 1...but In2Photos is right in that sometimes I won't go for white depending on light source. If it's a photo of a candle as source, for example, I will make sure the WB is more of an orange. Likewise, even with a diffuser on my flash....in low light conditions I've noticed it looks too blue.

The problem with WB, is that I believe dSLRs just don't have the optical systems to adjust the white balance of light. Our eyes are definitely tuned to the various intensities of the sun: it's our basis of what white light should be. We have a larger density of cones then rods. When it's brighter, the color temp of sunlight is a bluer shade. Our eyes will adjust to this color difference naturally, as the higher density of cones will become more active when it's brighter (and cones pick up bright light, warm color....rods pick up cooler color). A digital sensor just wants to record the light at it's absolute color temp. Anyway, that's my reasoning as to why dSRLs are so dumb with WB I rarely have my 5D on auto WB for any situation. It can be too cool or warm either indoors or outdoors.

I usually go for a 'nice image'. Sometimes a bit warmer then neutral, sometimes neutral, sometimes completely the other way...
So I guess I'm with the previous posters...

Another probelm with the poll and question is for instace number #2.. "Colors as they really are"

I see in performing arts that many are adjusting white balance to "color as they would look under sunlight" as opposed to "Colors as they appeared at the time under warm incandescent lights"
"as shot" and "correct" are rarely "as the light was at the time"

Truth is, our brains adjust for tungsten color temp, but not completely. Tungsten light looks a little "warm" in real life. So the "correct" white balance won't look "natural".

I'll often click on something white to make it "correct", then crank up the color temp 500 to 1000K to get more pleasing colors.

For indoor photos I don't correct them all the way back to natural, I leave them slightly warm, but not too much. No huge orange casts for me.

Each shot has to be processed individually, based on what it is I'm looking for from THAT shot. I don't have a "standard", or anything like that.

Having said that, however, in most cases, indoors with no flash, there usually is more of an orange cast than I'd like to see, and I usually cool that down a bit. How much, again, depends on the shot.

I think I prefer to take them on a shot by shot basis...there are times I like to have natural colors and times when I want to creatively interpret. But usually the camera is wrong so unless I do a grey card, I find that I'm always adjusting the WB to one or the other...

I believe that "colours as they really are" can be quite subjective.

A picture around a campfire under only campfire light would appear quite yellow - but that's the way it would look to the eye. I would think that trying to get the "correct" WB would destroy the mood.

I agree that it has to be done on a case by case basis.

I have no problem with white balance. Usually, if I care enough about the picture I put a gel on the flash. Daylight to tunsten or daylight to fluorescent.

Then just click on a preset in CSRAW.

Also - flickr isn't not a sample of what the camera can do. It's a sample of how bad the users can be... on average.

I always use a custom white balance of 0,0 in the camera, shoot in RAW, and go over it in Lightroom. I really can't stand the orange-warm tone that comes with indoor shots.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #3075889
I see in performing arts that many are adjusting white balance to "color as they would look under sunlight" as opposed to "Colors as they appeared at the time under warm incandescent lights"
"as shot" and "correct" are rarely "as the light was at the time"

I think what makes a disconnect is that in a room that's lit by tungsten, your eyes will see them as more of a white, simply because they have a lower intensity. Our eyes will see a warm colored light as white if it has a lower intensity.

However, when you look at a photo, it's in a different light situation. Your eye's are in a different state because they are under different lighting. So what was white when you took the photo, may no longer be the case when you see the photo on a monitor or printed out.

But theater is a bit different. Our brains will also reach an equilibrium when light gradually changes hues: we won't perceive it. I just read a story in a photo book, where the author said he attended a lecture by Kodak. They were giving a 1 hour long slide show. He said each photo looked well exposed with "natural" lighting. At the end of the show, the lecturer showed the first and last photo next to each other. They had completely different color hues (one was more of an orange, one was more of a blue).

Dave, well put, and thatnks for that.
I spend about half my life in a dark theatre, and yet never considered the case of "acclimatization" to the lighting.. where we are looking at very warm beige hues for "whites", but we "know" it to be real white, and thus see it as white...

In particular your point that when we then see images of those scenes we are no longer in that environment,. funny that this has never occurred to me after all these years.

Totally and completely subjective. Grey card, eye dropper, WhiBal, color temp... whatever it takes for me to get the correct WB in the image I want. A warmer cast works better on certain images than some images that have been corrected for WB. It all depends on the mood you're trying to create. I chose #1.

I do realize that this discussion is about indoor tungsten light, but a cooler color temp would not have worked well for this shot IMO...

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