White Balance: set it and forget it?

It just depends how much time you want to spend tweaking in pp. We always shoot everything raw. Sometimes there isn't the luxury of always custom WB, but when we can, we do try to balance to a target to try to save time on the back end. If you are shooting weddings, you should be shooting in RAW. We shoot raw for everything, no matter what it is. CF cards are CHEAP. When I hear friends or colleauges talk about jpegs for weddings, I cringe. It's ok if you can get a perfect histogram everytime in every situation. But you make a change to a JPEG and you've compromised image quality.

Throw that disk in the trash.

if your looking for a 1 setting for all things fix - I would try 5600K in the w balance settings if your camera allows for K settings.

SkipD wrote in post #9825655
I suspect that the statement was taken somewhat out of context with other things such as always setting up a custom white balance or always shooting in RAW mode and adjusting color in post-processing or something similar.

I agree. I suspect that in context, it would be implied he meant outdoor photographs. Even then, the "cloud" can produce somewhat cool images if they're actually taken in open shade.

I don't use AWB myself because it can change slightly depending on how the colors in the scene change--even when the light does not change. You can wind up with slightly different white balance from image to image.

I shoot raw and prefer to set the white balance by the pictogam. It won't be perfect, but all the images of that session will have been tagged for the same white balance, so I can batch-correct them in post-processing rather than having to tweak each image individually.

DunnoWhen wrote in post #9885527
I think it's Bryan Peterson. I seem to recall him explaining this in his book "Understanding Exposure". He says he likes the warmer feeling it give his photographs.

I didn't read that book but I think he also said it in Learning How TO See Creatively. Thought it was strange he said he would want his pictures that warm (by setting for cloudy all the time).

Yep, Bryan Peterson. I saw that in a video a couple of years ago. I was going to make a post here but then thought: why waste the time and incur the wrath? So I just moved on.

In some ways he's like a Ken Rockwell. At one time, a few decades ago, he was a source authority. No longer. In the (Creatively) video not only did he say lame-arse things like that, but walked around shooting a bunch of crap photos. He's a has-been.

Anybody who instructs photography students to put their WB in one mode then leave it there the rest of their lives is no longer to be taken seriously.