Colour temperature /white balance

Well, in that case, it makes sense..

Still, a single shot with the WinBall in frame (under the same lighting), will not hurt white balance correction in post processing.
With couple of clicks with Color Sampler you can correct all shots taken with the same lighting.
Works all the same for both Sony and 30D images.

Sorry, I didn't answer the question correctly - what bugs me is that if the cheaper P&S camera presets handle the white balance quite well, why can't the more expensive 30D?

I don’t know.

I don’t have much experience with 30D, but on 40D, I found that AWB works quite well outside.
A tad warmer, I’d say, but not much.
Inside, it’s entirely different story..
You either have to fiddle a lot in PP, or to use Custom WB and Gray card.

I can see I'm going to have to get a gray card or a whibal - thanks for all your help guys!

Speaking of gray cards:

Why can't I print one? I can tell my printer driver to print grayscale and the printer will use only the black ink. I have nice, white paper - Canon Photo Paper Pro.

Black on white - it might not be 18%, of course, but it's gotta be gray.

Anyone have thoughts?

-js

PApers have whiteners in them that effect UV light refelction, so even though it may look grey the light bouncing off of it will probably not actually be grey.

I used to shoot exclusively in jpeg, but more and more I shoot in RAW because of this very issue - its just so much easier to correct the WB in RAW - it has saved many photos for me.