About White Balance

After 3 months of using G1 (hopefully, only 3 ) I've discovered that all this time I have not been using properly WB settings. I used to use Auto regardless of ambient light. And as a result I had to correct color cast in PhotoShop.

I found out that Auto causes reddish tone in bright sunny morning (about 7:45 am) and indoor with tungsten+flash light.

My question: how often do you, guys, change your WB settings ? And under what conditions ?

I shoot in RAW, so in my G1 the white balance is always "auto". I do custom conversion and do manual WB there if needed.

I do it in Zoombrowser like this:

- you have to show any value between white and black to let ZB get the reference shade of gray. You don't need a certain gray or white value, anything goes. Look for areas close to people's faces, areas where lights mix and shadow areas.

- if you have two pictures from same location ("WB can be picked" and "no WB found" and only other one has good WB pick point, you can copy and rename the "WB can be picked" to "AA_imagefilename.CRW"​, then select both the "WB can be picked" and the "no WB found" and do a custom WB. Zoombrowser does both with settings of the first photo.

The auto works _usually_ fine. In mixed lighting situations custom WB has saved the photos many times.

Also, it's worth noting that the colors on the final photo do not have to be correct, they just have to look good. This means custom WB lets you express yourselft artistically and find the best look for each picture, not neccessarily the most realistic look.

Yesterday I took some trio promo images in a very difficult place where indirect natural light came from left and right too strongly (not enough curtains to cover it) and there were two types of roof lamps plus I used a bounced flash. Would you trust auto WB and JPEG on such a situation?

This is what RAW->TIFF auto conversion did:

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Hi, Pekka !

Thank you for your comments. It's useful and helpful and I really appreciate it (you've heard this many times and this is my two cents in our chorus )

I rarely used RAW. Unfortunately, Canon conversion tool is not very fast. That's why I did all job in PS. But indeed why not to use what we already have ? The last day I've been photographying using RAW. And I have to say that I like the results. Regardless of the low speed.

Yeah, I feel that another extra expenses is coming up I mean 1GB Microdrive.

I liked your version 1 more than others. Where was your White Pint in this picture ?

Pekka wrote:
I shoot in RAW, so in my G1 the white balance is always "auto". I do custom conversion and do manual WB there if needed.

I do it in Zoombrowser like this:

- you have to show any value between white and black to let ZB get the reference shade of gray. You don't need a certain gray or white value, anything goes. Look for areas close to people's faces, areas where lights mix and shadow areas.

- if you have two pictures from same location ("WB can be picked" and "no WB found" and only other one has good WB pick point, you can copy and rename the "WB can be picked" to "AA_imagefilename.CRW"​, then select both the "WB can be picked" and the "no WB found" and do a custom WB. Zoombrowser does both with settings of the first photo.

The auto works _usually_ fine. In mixed lighting situations custom WB has saved the photos many times.

Also, it's worth noting that the colors on the final photo do not have to be correct, they just have to look good. This means custom WB lets you express yourselft artistically and find the best look for each picture, not neccessarily the most realistic look.

Yesterday I took some trio promo images in a very difficult place where indirect natural light came from left and right too strongly (not enough curtains to cover it) and there were two types of roof lamps plus I used a bounced flash. Would you trust auto WB and JPEG on such a situation?


Here's WB custom version 1:

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This could go on until version you need is there. I like version 1, as it brings out the warmth of the floor and does not have that magenta feel.

That's what I like in RAW!

Pekka,

Great trick with the using white balance from one photo for another. I had heard that it could be done, but I did not understand how to do it. Now I do. I can really use this sometimes.

jays