WB Problem

Hi!

last friday a friend of mine and me where taking photos at night in the old town of vienna. I wanted to da a custom white balance, because the light was extremely orange. so I took out my greycard, made a photo, set the custum white balance, take a test shot, and what I got was this:

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Yup... I can do that too.. Shoot a grey card under the orange light of sodium lamps and choose that as the custom white balance and presto all your shots are GREEN

I've found it works EVERY time with my 10D.....

I have no idea why this happens.. But the custom white balance feature is useless for sodium vapor lamps..

If you want to make the orange light from sodium lamps nicer, use RAW mode and then when you process your file, select your white point from something white in the scene with the white balance eye dropper tool... That's the dependable way to do it.......

don't you have to have the card in white light to get a good balance on it?

i do this with my A80 and just learned how to do it with my 300d
and i have fun with it.
but i've learned if you want to get perfect balance then whatever you're taking a pic of has to be in non colored lite

i think the pic looks kool

Jim_T wrote:
Yup... I can do that too.. Shoot a grey card under the orange light of sodium lamps and choose that as the custom white balance and presto all your shots are GREEN

I've found it works EVERY time with my 10D.....

I have no idea why this happens.. But the custom white balance feature is useless for sodium vapor lamps..

If you want to make the orange light from sodium lamps nicer, use RAW mode and then when you process your file, select your white point from something white in the scene with the white balance eye dropper tool... That's the dependable way to do it.......

thats interesting. yes, I shot RAW, its working but its more work and its not that good as it can be. much more noise ... a friend of mine shot with a nikon D70, and it seems that he has no problem...

here is an example after RAW conversion:

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

WB Problem

Hi there

It's my understanding that to use custom white balance with EOS cameras you use a white card not a grey card.

Best wishes

Sid frisby
Blaenau Ffestiniog
Cymru (Wales) UK

well, it sounds logical, but it isnt. I've done some test shots, one with the white back of the greycard and one with the grey card itself. the result is better with the greycard. it looks more naturally. with the white setting it looks really cold.

Actually, you have to have the card in the light you want to shoot, regardless of colour, whether it is tungsten, flouresent, blue, green, etc.
When you set the manual wb, the camera tries to eliminate the colour cast, and revert the gray/white card back to neutral.
That way, anything that is white in your scene (say your eyeballs) will look white, not yellow, blue, green, etc.

Maybe this will help.
Reasonably 'white' light, yes. That's light that has RGB & CMY in it's spectrum. (This is a bit simplistic, but you'll get the idea)
Ever throw salt on a fire and see it burns yellow? That's caused by sodium in the salt. Sodium will only give out yellow light when it's heated. So, you have Y, but no RGB & CM. So you were screwed before you started. Changing the WB in RAW will help a bit, but the other colors aren't there, so it will never look exactly right. Should be more acceptable though.

White light that's slightly bluish is OK. Dark blue won't work. RG & CMY.
Flouresent, most of the cheap ones, are minus red, which is why pics come out greenish. Some flouresents are termed 'daylight' and can be WBalanced fairly well.

I once shot a model lit with several spot lights & each had a different filter - C,M,Y,R,G, & B. Result was a more or less properly lit model with multi colored shadows. (Wish I could find it!)