WB on 40D

Anyone tested the 40D in tungsten and fluorescent lighting?

I find that the WB is off in either AWB or proper setting. The colours come out green or very yellow. I exchange the first body I got. Now I have another one which seems better but not perfect. Wondering if I am expecting to much of a consumer body....

Thank you.

I just assume that indoors white balance will be off. Correct in PP. You can do manual or custom WB, but I really don't trust any of that to get things "right".

I shoot in RAW, so adjusting WB is non-destructive, YMMV, but my point is that you just can't trust the camera's auto WB unless you are in daylight.

I bought an ExpoDisk recently and it does OK in getting your WB relatively neutral -- much better than any in-camera setting. Give it a try!

Tony

Tony Long Photos on PBase

Canon's AWB is what Canon calls "Feeling-Based White Balance". It intentionally undercorrects to preserve the general color of the original lighting. It works pretty well for shots made in various kinds of daytime lighting, but most people feel that it is too undercorrected when used with artificial lighting.

The Tungsten preset is for 3200°K professional tungsten photofloods (the same as Tungsten film). This is a considerably higher color temperature than home lighting, which is more like 2700-2900°K.

The Fluorescent preset is for "white fluorescent". There are all kinds of fluorescent lighting with different colors and casts.

Canon's Custom WB is usually very accurate. If you don't want any of the original lighting color left, CWB is the way to go.

My advice is to get a neutral reference—a gray card, WhiBal, or whatever—and take some test shots in different lighting to see how to get the WB on your camera to come out the way that you like it.

Or as everyone else is going to suggest, "just shoot Raw and leave WB until post-processing".

White balance has always been a issue for me as well. With my 40D, I tend to also adjust the white balance using the WB Shift/Bkt feature located just under Custom WB on your menu screen. I found this quite helpful esp with indoor shots. I also fix the white balance in Post Processing as well, if it isn't quite right. But I mainly stick to the Auto White Balance feature and just do minor adjustments in the WB SHIFT/BKT....

custom white balance is very very good, and it has always gave me good results