White Balance: now or later?

Going from a Nikon F3 to a D200 is still taking some getting used to. So many controls. So much time to forget to change a setting back.

One thing I no longer use is my camera's white balance dial. It seems kind of "point-n-shoot" to dial in a setting like "cloudy" or whatever, and then I forget to dial it back, and I get a bunch of too-warm images before I catch the mistake.

In LR2 I can use a slider to change the temp and tint as finely as I want, and that seems to work better for me. Even better than dialing in a WB setting in LR2. The thing is, I'm not that great a judge of the finer points of white balance in an image, and I wonder if there are better ways to really nail white as white (realizing I can still warm it up or whatever, if I like it better).

John

I set my d200's WB to auto and shoot that way probably over 95% of the time unless I have a special lighting or weather condition I am dealing with in the field.

Then if I do any WB ajdustments in PS they are relatively minor. Also when previewing images on the LCD I get a more accurate idea about how my exposure looks.

There was a thread recently about this topic I believe and it seemed as though the general consensus was to set the WB to auto as it's correct almost all of the time (as Lia points out) and you will end up getting more accurate and true WB. Look for the thread to get the specifics

- Luke

If there's anything in a photo that's "supposed" to be pure white, there's a really nice Q&D shortcut to adjusting white balance. Go to Levels and select the white eyedropper, then click on whatever's supposed to be white. Hey, presto! If it doesn't work, undo and try another white spot in the photo. Still doesn't work, go back to what you normally do. It's a real timesaver for me when time's of the essence.

If there's anything in a photo that's "supposed" to be pure white, there's a really nice Q&D shortcut to adjusting white balance.

The problem with using this method is that hardly anyone wants 'pure white' in their image. That translates to 'blown out' (no info.). Much better to use the grey eyedropper on a grey or neutral tone.


And I'm another 'all the time' AWB user.
Works just fine except under artificial lighting.

I'm a 90% Auto White Balance kind of a guy with one exception. If I am shooting under any kind of forest canopy, I measure using one of those $15 cap looking things. The results (Canon 50D) are excellent, and I feel much more comfortable that my colors are "real."

I measure using one of those $15 cap looking things

Can you be more specific?

Philip--

Dot Line White Balance Lens Cap. I bought mine on a whim at a local camera shop; I see they are only $10 at BH: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/535313-REG/Dot_Line_DL_2558_58mm_White_Balance_Lens.html

I keep a card 18% gray and white on the reverse, for moments when white balance may be in question. Setting white balance prior to a shot is always better than winging it with an auto setting. The D200 in particular has a very narrow "functional" operating range for auto WB - from 4500k to 6200k for accurate WB, with the accuracy diminishing as you reach the extremes of what Nikon publishes as the range - from 3500k to 8000k.

Using a white or gray card will also mostly eliminate color casts introduced by the subject matter itself. Taking a picture of dense green foliage where there are no other predominant colors will produce a broad color shift with auto WB, but not at all with a custom WB.



An example of when you might not want to use a custom WB arrived at with a reference (card, expodisk, etc) is a sunrise/sunset, or night scenes where the light itself is in the image. There you would have to make a creative call and go for the balance setting that will most accurately portray what your intent is.

Anytime you make corrections in postprocessing you are introducing opportunities for clipping, compression, noise and other undesirable image impacts. This is true even if you are shooting raw and converting. If the image is important and color is critical, its always better to get it as close to right as possible during the shoot, and make the least amount of adjustment afterward.

A weird thing that can happen when shooting under a forest canopy as John describes occurs when you have shafts of light in your scene. These will show up with a severe magenta cast if the balance for the rest of the scene is accurate. That's where you will have to make your masks for the colored areas and adjust just the mask to match the rest of the image.

An expansion on Hank's idea that I sometimes use in Photoshop is to duplicate the image, then apply a blur average filter. The resulting image will be some sort of gray, revealing any color cast. Then you select the working copy, using an adjustment layer, select the middle eyedropper and sample the duplicated gray image. When you accept the changes you will see your working copy snap to a normally balanced image. Most of the time, anyway. It's not perfect, but it is pretty fast.

In real-life situations where you do not have the luxury of time, or you simply grabbed a shot with a wrong white balance setting, you can still get by with making the necessary corrections later. In this case shooting raw will give you the least amount of negative impacts, shooting jpg the most.

Philip,
A plain ol' white coffee filter will do the trick exactly the same as the more expensive 'caps'. Save your money and give it a shot!

I just started using the coffee filter method, best 5 cent investment of my life. Colors are spot on in any condition.

Use a photographic white/gray card - they are made to provide neutral balance. The coffee filter, lens cap and other similar methods where you are measuring the color balance of the "scene" vs the color balance of the "light" falling on the scene are inherently less accurate. If you don't believe me, use the coffee filter method to balance a scene containing yellow or red flowers where the flowers occupy 75% of the frame - then use the card method. You will see a difference.

I started out using Sunny, Cloudy etc WB settings on the camera, then started using a digital grey card, but now just set the K manually depending on the look I want. I did extensive testing of WB readings from grey cards at different times of the day and compiled them as presets in Lightroom. I got to know what the different temperatures were in different light, and what I preferred in my photos. So now I use manual WB as a further creative tool when shooting. I use the RGB histogram on the camera to see the balance of colors, and it tells me if the shot is warm (more red) or cool (more blue). When all the colors align, I know I've got close to a neutral balance (generally). I always strive to get the WB the way I want at the time of capture so I rarely change it in post. I still carry the grey card, but will only consider using it if I can't find the right balance using the histogram, which hasn't happened yet.

Based on David's comments above I decided to give Custom WB a try this afternoon. I shot a couple photos of the maples in my yard using AWB and the usual 5200 value I usually use. Then I shot a photo of the 18% gray card I have and imported it onto my CWB setting on my 50D. I then re-shot the same photos for comparison and WOW--rich vibrant color popped from the LCD display!! The difference is amazing, my images looked exactly like what I was looking at over the top of the camera, whereas the AWB shots were a little washed out. I'm headed out to SNP tomorrow to get some shots in my favorite stream valley and the gray card is definitely going to get used. Give it a try if you haven't already, I'm convinced! Thanks David--Larry

This may not be for you but I nail WB in ACR (at least I think it is nailed). Then once the image enters PS CS4, one of the last things I do is run the Auto Color, Auto Levels (can not remember the new names off hand). Of course this almost always massively over does an image, but I then go to Edit/Fade and fade it in slightly. Almost always, even when I think WB is perfect, some % of one or the other improves the WB! A little secret of mine, don't tell anyone.

Like most other responders, I've tried every method for white balance. And I now always use the Daylight preset, unless I'm indoors, when I may use Tungsten or, occasionally, Fluorescent. I never use WB devices/filters etc.

I almost always tweak WB in Lightroom; even if it's just a bit, I like to make it look just the way I want. I've found that, for my work, Daylight is always the best starting point, and more often than not, I'm dissatisfied with Auto.

Also, keep in mind that wonky WB will throw off your camera's histogram. If you regularly rely on the histogram while shooting, understand that if the WB is too far off it will skew the representation of tones, also.

If I need to match colors precisely a gray card (WhiBal) or X-Rite Color Checker is the only way to go.