White Balance When shooting RAW??

In the "Am I the wedding photographer" thread, Jeff posted;


"One other tip: set your white balance to daylight or some other setting
you like, but not Auto. That way, all of your photos will have
consistent white balance".


I found this very interesting, It made perfect sense and I understand white balance as a concept, but also understand when shoting RAW you can adjust WB, photoshop CS5 is extremely good at post processing things like this, so I was wondering what peoples experiences were here;


Obviously getting the WB correct in the first place saves post fettling, but does it really matter if it can be changed later???? I must admit i tend to use auto and change it later if i think it needs changing, but i'll also admit i haven't really experimented much with setting the WB manually before shooting, does one method yield better results than the other????

EDIT: (Talking about RAW format) Yea it matters because many canon cameras are bad in auto wb in indoor light settings. 5d's are real bad indoors and low light with wb. So take a grey card and shoot raw.


Almost all the pics I take I adjust with the K temp balance to see if I can improve it. In Raw you can play with it and its non destructive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ade

"One other tip: set your white balance to daylight or some other setting
you like, but not Auto. That way, all of your photos will have
consistent white balance".

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I don't think this matters at all. It would just insure that your settings are going to be wrong when your in shade, inside or wherever. For that matter in DPP it just takes a second if you want to reapply any of the settings whether it be Auto or whatever to all the RAW pictures.

Guilty on both counts -- I made the original comment, and I'm also guilty of leaving my 5D in auto WB mode indoors with low light. To stop the camera from varying the white balance all over the place from shot to shot, I recently started setting one white balance value and leaving it alone (now all I have to do is start remembering to set it again when I move outside!)


Shooting in raw, I don't think the camera applies a white balance value to the image, but it does record the white balance as data, whether you set it manually or it was in Auto mode. Then, when you convert the image on your computer, your raw converter typically applies whatever value the raw file tells it to. You can change all of your images from one location to one value pretty quickly using various raw converters, or even in Photoshop.


The reason I suggested doing that for the wedding shoot was that it would keep the images consistent instead of having the white balance varying (slightly or, in my case, usually a lot) as it often does when it's left in Auto mode. Using the Daylight setting has worked well for me with Canon speedlights, at least as a starting point.


As HGNitehawk pointed out, it's often worthwhile to adjust the balance in post-processing in raw, where your adjustments are non-destructive.


By the way, I've had a lot of good results using an XRite Color Checker Passport -- it has regular neutral gray, but also several variations that you can click your white balance dropper on to warm or cool the image in increments. It also lets you create a custom color profile for your individual camera body (not just by model) and load it into your raw converter.

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

5d's are real bad indoors and low light with wb.
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I am no expert on white balance but my 5D seems to work very well in AWB in most all situation. Many times better than any of the Rebels I have used. I just purchased a used 1DmkIIN and it seems equally good at AWB.


Mybe my eyes can't see minor differences in color though I am far from color blind.


Mark

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clemmb

I am no expert on white balance but my 5D seems to work very well in AWB in most all situation. Many times better than any of the Rebels I have used. I just purchased a used 1DmkIIN and it seems equally good at AWB.


Mybe my eyes can't see minor differences in color though I am far from color blind.


Mark

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Mark, I have two 5D II's and they are both the same. In low light with incandescent lighting in the house, they both do poor. I put it in K at 3200 and it will be about right. I have read reviews and heard others say theirs are the same way.


I have a 1D IV and it does very well in AWB.


Rick

I don't know too many cameras that do well with indoor incandescent light bulbs using AWB or even Indoor. They are probably some of the worse bulbs you could use for any kind of lighting. They put off an unnatural off white or soft yellow color cast in the first place. Anything white is only going to reflect the color from the light bulbs instead of true white.


I use either a gray card, or if I don't have a gray card with me I shoot a picture with something white covering the center and use that to set a custom wb.

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by clemmb

I am no expert on white balance but my 5D seems to work very well in AWB in most all situation. Many times better than any of the Rebels I have used. I just purchased a used 1DmkIIN and it seems equally good at AWB.


Mybe my eyes can't see minor differences in color though I am far from color blind.


Mark

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Mark, I have two 5D II's and they are both the same. In low light with incandescent lighting in the house, they both do poor. I put it in K at 3200 and it will be about right. I have read reviews and heard others say theirs are the same way.


I have a 1D IV and it does very well in AWB.


Rick
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I have a 5D mkI 12.8MP. I have read the mkII has a different filter.


Mark

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Originally Posted by Jeff Lucia

Shooting in raw, I don't think the camera applies a white balance value to the image, but it does record the white balance as data, whether you set it manually or it was in Auto mode. Then, when you convert the image on your computer, your raw converter typically applies whatever value the raw file tells it to.You can change all of your images from one location to one value pretty quickly using various raw converters, or even in Photoshop.

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You're correct that if you shoot in RAW, you can change the WB in post \-processing without penalty. But if you aren't using DPP for post-processing, you might be losing some data if you shoot with a Canon flash. The flash passes color temparature information to the camera, which I think is stored separately in the RAW file from the WB, but used by DPP when selecting Auto or Flash WB. On a shot where flash was used, when I set Flash WB in DxO, it's a fixed 6000 K, but Flash WB in DPP is not a fixed color temperature, it varies by shot based on the supplemental data in the RAW file, which other programs ignore (along with things like AF point, etc.).

John, I think I remember hearing in some class I took that the Flash WB in the camera is for studio strobes, while speedlights are balanced for daylight. I don

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

...But if you aren't using DPP for post-processing, you might be losing some data if you shoot with a Canon flash. The flash passes color temparature information to the camera, which I think is stored separately in the RAW file from the WB, but used by DPP when selecting Auto or Flash WB. On a shot where flash was used, when I set Flash WB in DxO, it's a fixed 6000 K, but Flash WB in DPP is not a fixed color temperature, it varies by shot based on the supplemental data in the RAW file, which other programs ignore (along with things like AF point, etc.).
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For the sake of (obvious) clarity, this applies if you're using a single flash on-camera. If you're using any remote flashes of any kind, you lose the avenue for this reporting AND should probably be correcting all of your flashes to a common point.

You can correct white balance in post very easily. However, you can't fix exposure errors as easily (if you're too far out of range, you'll lose information either because you're down in the noisy land or up in the clipping land). Therefore, I'd suggest that you consider ALWAYS shooting at a neutral WB (say 5600K 0tint) and always correct the WB to ambient/desired in post. Why? To prevent exposure errors on a per-color basis.


What happens when you shoot in incandescent light? The red channel gets a lot more information than if you had the same scene under daylight, and 3200K decreases the red channel for you. One of the side effects is the preview JPEG that's embedded in your RAW file (the image you see when you review the shot) is now corrected to 3200K. As a result, the histogram you see is corrected to 3200K, and the strong red channel is now masked. If you have highlight alert turned on, you might not see clipped reds as a result. Had you shot at 5600K, you might see the clipped reds, and might decide to apply some -EC in those conditions, improving the quality of your capture.


The same would apply under cloudy skies (strong blue) or icky fluorescents (strong green).

Thanks peety, that makes a lot of sense, to be honest, auto does seem to serve me well, (with a bit of post processing, usually warming up abit now i think about it), but I will have a play and see what happens.


Cheers everyone, some good tips

And the skin tones come from the red channel, so when you blow it out, the skin gets jacked up. Makes sense. Thanks.