Posted by Darren White on June 18, 2006 at 5:25 PM
I am curious.....when you go out to do shooting say in the gorge or forest area what mode do you set your camera on.....when I set mine to auto it seems so cold (blue) and when I set it to shade I get browns......is it better to change this after I get home and start the processing process...any info you have on this would be much appreciated.....btw, I am shooting all my images in raw now.....Even the wedding reception last night!
Hi Darren - I see this debated amongst us photographers often. White balance is so easily compensated for during raw processing that I don't make a big issue of it. Personally, I just shoot in AWB mode, which on my 20D is usually pretty good anyways, and then adjust in ACR as necessary...
I always shoot Auto White Balance and most of the time I am in aperture priority, evaluative metering, and I use auto focus as much as possible. I switch to full manual when I have to compensate exposure more than 2 stops.
Posted by Randy Hanna on June 20, 2006 at 12:19 AM
Darren:
I use the entire suite of Nikon digital gear. I never change from auto WB UNLESS I am going to shoot a multi-shot pano. At that point, everything goes manual. Many Nikons have a slight hue that can be comp'd by a plus 3 in the set-up. This would only effect the jpg. At one point, I was shooting RAW with a low-res jpg trailer. With the bugs worked out of Nikon Capture, and it's seamless transfer to CS2, I now shoot only RAW.
Posted by Sean Watson on June 20, 2006 at 11:16 AM
I've had pretty good luck with Nikon's auto white balance. I think of it as a way to solicit the cameras opinion about what color the light is. If it gets it wrong (it's not perfect) it's generally easy enough to fix it either in the raw conversion or in PS. If it's right (which seems to be the majority of the time), it saves me a little time. If, for some reason, I was shooting JPEGs, I'd probably worry more about it.
If you want to be sure to get it "right" you can use a gray card and meter your own white balance. (Read about PRE white balance in your manual.) If you have light in the field you want to be neutral, you can measure the gray card in that light. Just to be clear, if you like the color of the light you measure you're gray card in, this will kill that color and your shot will probably feel a bit more sterile than you expect. Even then you may prefer tweaking away from neutral than away from the starting point auto WB gives you.
Sean
Posted by Darren White on June 20, 2006 at 9:05 PM
Thanks Sean and everyone else...I am well aware of the Grey metering...one of my first jobs was working in a photo lab where the machines had to be calibrated to 18% Grey every week.....I shoot in so many different settings that keeping my camera on one mode seems to be hard....but I do know that the cloudy setting sucks....I guess it would just be easier to use AWB and adj after I get home!!!
Discussion
5 repliesI use the entire suite of Nikon digital gear. I never change from auto WB UNLESS I am going to shoot a multi-shot pano. At that point, everything goes manual. Many Nikons have a slight hue that can be comp'd by a plus 3 in the set-up. This would only effect the jpg. At one point, I was shooting RAW with a low-res jpg trailer. With the bugs worked out of Nikon Capture, and it's seamless transfer to CS2, I now shoot only RAW.
If you want to be sure to get it "right" you can use a gray card and meter your own white balance. (Read about PRE white balance in your manual.) If you have light in the field you want to be neutral, you can measure the gray card in that light. Just to be clear, if you like the color of the light you measure you're gray card in, this will kill that color and your shot will probably feel a bit more sterile than you expect. Even then you may prefer tweaking away from neutral than away from the starting point auto WB gives you.
Sean
Happy shooting!!
D