Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Christoph C. Feldhaim on February 06, 2010, 09:15:19 am
-
Thank you for spotting a light on the topic.
Here are my recent thoughts and personal suggestions / solutions for this problem.
I stopped caring about "correct" white balance too much after I understood,
that always shooting a metamerism free grey card and/or a colorchecker
simply helps me to completely destroy the light atmosphere.
I started shooting in auto whitebalance mode all the time and now choose the whitebalance
I find appropriate in the RAW converter later. I shoot a gray card to be able to kill the light to neutral
and then compare it with the daylight setting, which gives me colorized images in case of colored
light situations, like tungsten or light before sunrset.
The problem which I see is, that though the eye can auto whitebalance on its own to a certain degree,
the color of the light still has an important role in the look and feel of the scene we take.
If I shoot/adjust everything autobalanced / grey-card-neutralized I'd not get the warmth of the tungsten light
or a candle or the cold blue light right before sunrise, but not correcting at all gives me way too extreme colors.
What I do now is to look how the color would look if I use the grey card for white balance and how the whitebalance
would be changed if I used the daylight setting in the RAW converter. So I get a sort of measurement of the color
temperature at shooting time and can now moderately adjust the whitebalance between the extreme color of the non
whitebalancing daylight setting and the neutralizing greycard mode and adjust it somewhere in between to my liking.
I don't have any sort of color temperature measuring instrument. Just my Canon G11 and a Color Target / Gray Card.
Hope I didn't confuse it too much, but it seems to work not too bad.
To illustrate this I uploaded 4 variants - all processed with "Auto settings" in C1 and afterwards each got its individual whitebalance.
The image was taken on X-mas afternoon in a very subdued light in the blue hour before sunset whith a completeley covered sky - blue light.
Camera whitebalance at shooting time was set to "cloudy".
Whitebalance: "as shot = Cloudy"
[attachment=20058:IMG_0455...ownsized.jpg]
Whitebalance: "daylight (set in C1)"
[attachment=20059:IMG_0455...nsized_1.jpg]
Whitebalance: "corrected with a greycard taken on a shot immediately before the image was taken"
[attachment=20060:IMG_0455...nsized_2.jpg]
Whitebalance: "auto (in C1)"
[attachment=20061:IMG_0455...nsized_3.jpg]
I personally like the "daylight" setting most, though it is quite extreme.
It reflects most the cold atmosphere of that day.
For a print I'd probably convert to b/w or reduce the blue color a bit in direction of the "cloudy" setting or take down saturation.
Cheers
~Chris
-
I'm not sure why you need a grey card at all ...
Since you seem to recognize that the 'right' white balance is the one that looks the most pleasing to you relative to your intended output, why not leave the grey card at home?
-
I'm not sure why you need a grey card at all ...
Since you seem to recognize that the 'right' white balance is the one that looks the most pleasing to you relative to your intended output, why not leave the grey card at home?
Actually I'm leaving it at home more and more often ...
But sometimes I like to see the object "neutralized" as one of many measures of exploring it.
And for portraits I am happy to have the colorchecker with me, since skin is something special.
For reproductional purposes of course it would be mandatory ( I don't do repros).
But for my type of photography, indeed I can omit it often.
-
Indeed. Some folks seem to feel there are two "rules" of good landscape photography:
1. Only photograph early or late in the day because the light is so gorgeous then, and
2. Always set white balance with a WhiBal (or comparable) so you can destroy that beautiful light and make the scene look like mid-day.
I, too, stopped using my WhiBal after a few days once I realized I was no longer getting the sunset warmth that daylight film gave.
I agree: Season to taste!
Eric
-
I was no longer getting the sunset warmth that daylight film gave.
Since reading that recent Kodachrome emulation thread, I've created quite a few "film profiles" of my own using the DNG Profile editor to try and find exactly that ...
I take a synthetic Color Checker file ... apply various film effects and/or filters to alter the color response ... load into the DNG Editor ... make a recipe ... reverse the adjustments ... open a camera DNG ... apply the recipe .... output profile for use in ACR and Lightroom. Most digital film emulations seem to combine three elements - grain, color and tone curve. I take only the color response and leave the grain and tone curve for their own adjustment. I'm looking to isolate some of that film-like color response.
Combining the base Adobe Standard profile for my camera with at least some of the color response found in some classic films has produced some nice profiles that have some familiar characteristics ... and to get them looking the most familiar, I combine them with a daylight color balance in post.
They are better saturated options for those kind of conditions than the Camera Vivid or Camera Landscape settings in Lightroom.
-
Since reading that recent Kodachrome emulation thread, I've created quite a few "film profiles" of my own using the DNG Profile editor to try and find exactly that ...
Here's an example ...
All images processed the same except for the color profile ... the WB is set to Daylight.
The bottom three images come were processed using the stock camera profiles in Lightroom - from left to right they are "Adobe Standard", "Camera Standard", "Camera Landscape".
The top four images were processed using four different film profiles I made. The the two on the left are "from" one manufacturer and the two on the right "from" another. One is Kodak and one is Fuji.
Can you guess which is which?
[attachment=20063:color_profiles.jpg]
-
When ever I read about WB I often am amused at the topic and how passionate the arguments get as to what is a "right WB", especially after the segment that Michael did on LLVJ #19 about the X-Rite Passport. After creating the profile and applying it to the image, he says(with reference to WB) "...season to taste, as is always the case with these things...fine tuned a lttle bit to give it the color toneality that I want...". I adopted this philosophy a long time ago and have always carried a mini color checker card in my camera bag, but have generally used it only in rare instances and only as a starting point. Lets face it, after all is said and done, no matter what the "correct" WB is, we generally(when shooting RAW) "season to taste".
-
I generaly set mine to cloudy or a pwb close to it because I've noticed that it is the most easily malleable
in C.one. In Raw is the season of taste as said before,
but many press photographers, specialy the 1D's shoot only jpeg files, russet's season...
Fred.
-
I still tend to use a gray card as a starting point. It's rarely where I want to end up, but it gives me a consistent starting point. Depending on what I'm shooting, I have certain preference for warm/cool, etc. that Michael was referring to. I then add this bias on top of the reference. For example, for outdoor shooting I'll often apply the gray card to minimize casts, then add about +500 to the temperature.
-
For landscapes, I shoot Raw and auto whitebalance and then process in Lightroom as soon as possible.
I adjust the white balance a soon as possible after taking the images, trying to remember what the light was like at the time and how I 'felt' about the scene.
-
If you know where "neutral" is with a grey or white card, or a color checker, or a whibal, and have some kind of grip on normal color temps during the day (or temps that you want) -- the temps of full sun at noon, open shade, cloudy, early morning/larger afternoon, etc., you should then be able to quickly dial in the actual color, instead of screwing around trying to get it by playing with sliders & etc. The problem with large eye adjustments is that your room probably isn't neutral, your monitor probably isn't exactly neutral, and you wind up with your main subject looking okay (to your eye) but then you notice in your print that somebody has purple hair, who doesn't. All of this, of course, only if you want to shoot your subject in actual colors. If you prefer to choose your colors, then you don't have to worry about it. You can see the results of the latter at any postcard stand featuring pictures of the Grand Canyon. It's much purpler than you remember. 8-)
By the way, why is this thread in this forum?
-
By the way, why is this thread in this forum?
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/balance.shtml (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/balance.shtml)
-
This is a very good topic of discussion. I've be alarmed at how many seem to shoot on AWB, even more disturbed at some photographers who put to print images that clearly have WB that is neither accurate, in some cases wildly wrong (esp local press shooters!, worst offenders of all)
There is no right or wrong, but there is looks awful, and looks decent.
I'd say it's better to be a bit warm, than a bit cool. WB can be used for creative effect too, but blue cool skin tones tend to look nasty
I use a WB lens cap, and mostly Kelvins. I got out of the bad habit some suggest, just auto WB and shoot raw. Never hurts to get it to a good starting point, than wildly off. It's an often overlooked aspect of photography, not sure why..it can make a big difference to some shots.
-
When ever I read about WB I often am amused at the topic and how passionate the arguments get as to what is a "right WB", especially after the segment that Michael did on LLVJ #19 about the X-Rite Passport. After creating the profile and applying it to the image, he says(with reference to WB) "...season to taste, as is always the case with these things...fine tuned a lttle bit to give it the color toneality that I want...". I adopted this philosophy a long time ago and have always carried a mini color checker card in my camera bag, but have generally used it only in rare instances and only as a starting point. Lets face it, after all is said and done, no matter what the "correct" WB is, we generally(when shooting RAW) "season to taste".
The fact that Michael needed some further adjustment of WB to achieve the desired results does not obviate the fact that use of the Passport WB and profile got him much closer to the desired result and simplified the whole process.
If you look at the shooting conditions in the LLVJ #19 review, you will see that Michael was shooting under overcast conditions and on the floor of a forest with autumn green and yellow foliage. The ambient daylight would have been blueish, but would have been modified by reflection and filtration by the foliage. The main WB slider in ACR or LR (temperature) adjusts along the Planckian locus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature) of a black body radiator. However, only direct sunlight corresponds to black body radiation, and the blueish tint of an overcast sky is from Rayleigh scattering and is non-Planckian, as is the effect of the surrounding foliage. These effects would require use of the Tint slider, and there are innumerable combinations of the temperature and tint sliders.
Another question might concern whether or not Michael might have gotten comparable results merely by using a Whibal or similar card for a custom WB, and not bothered with the custom profile. Perhaps, but one should remember that ACR performs WB by interpolating between profiles for daylight and tungsten, both on the Planckian locus. With non-black body illumination, this might not give optimal results. Perhaps Madman Chan could comment.
-
These effects would require use of the Tint slider, and there are innumerable combinations of the temperature and tint sliders.
Exactly, and that's why I want to have a known spectrally neutral reference in (one of) my "under foliage" type of images. One may come up with something that looks reasonable after a bit of fiddling about with Tint and Temperature, but nothing beats getting it to neutral first, and then adjusting it from accurate towards pleasing (with usually only the temprature control). It's the efficient way to do it.
These types of shooting scenarios can also happen in urban surroundings with colored buildings, or under mixed lighting (especially when discontinuous spectral lightsources are added to the mix).
Cheers,
Bart
-
Speaking of white balanced, I have always wondered how could I get a "neutral" white balance, one that showed the scene as it was taken without any kind of "compensation".
-
Speaking of white balanced, I have always wondered how could I get a "neutral" white balance, one that showed the scene as it was taken without any kind of "compensation".
I'm not sure if I understand your question. An image is either white balanced or it is not. The white balance may be off-the-mark when the scene didn't offer good enough clues as to what the spectral composition of the illuminant was, or the algorithm was not effective. A camera by itself doesn't have a good color balance (it's usually not a goal for the manufacturer), it needs postprocessing (Raw conversion and white balancing) to achieve a usable result.
Cheers,
Bart
-
I'm not sure if I understand your question. An image is either white balanced or it is not. The white balance may be off-the-mark when the scene didn't offer good enough clues as to what the spectral composition of the illuminant was, or the algorithm was not effective. A camera by itself doesn't have a good color balance (it's usually not a goal for the manufacturer), it needs postprocessing (Raw conversion and white balancing) to achieve a usable result.
Cheers,
Bart
I was thinking of how to obtain an image without any white balance at all. In my camera, I must select a white balance, be it "auto" or any of the other presets; and in any RAW developer I have tried, again I must select between "auto", a preset, or my own value. Some software (dcraw) can output files using a "flat" white balance, but then the camera's response is not taken into account, and pictures are very greenish.
Sometimes, I would like to see a photograph exactly as the real scene was: if the light source was predominantly red, I want to see white objects as red. Probably, the best approach would be to find the white balance for an theoretical illuminant with a flat spectral composition... if that makes any sense at all.
Thanks.
-
This all makes me wonder how on earth we managed back in the days of slide film - somehow a colour temperature of 5200K (at least for outdoor) seemed to work just fine in almost every outdoor situation. Don't get me wrong: I love digital, am not a Luddite and would never go back. However I sometimes think that one unfortunate side effect of digital is that we all spend far too much time worrying about things which don't really matter very much.
And speaking of WB related things which don't matter very much in the grand scheme of things: I live at high-ish altitude on the equator and have noticed that AWB tends to produce a reading 500K to 1000K below where it would be at sea level in more northern latitudes. For example a sunlit outdoor scene in Nairobi (~6000 feet, ~1 degree south of the Equator) might give me a AWB setting of about 4500K and a similar scene in southern England would give me around 5200K. Anyone have any idea of the physics behind this? Not that it matters very much.
Ed
-
Sometimes, I would like to see a photograph exactly as the real scene was: if the light source was predominantly red, I want to see white objects as red. Probably, the best approach would be to find the white balance for an theoretical illuminant with a flat spectral composition... if that makes any sense at all.
I understand, but that's not how the human visual system works. We mentally correct (WB) the image, and our camera doesn't. That's why shadows look so blue in an image that's color balanced for daylight, and we didn't notice it when we looked at those same shadows as we shot the image. When we look at a piece of white paper, we will always see it as white, regardless of the dominant lightsource (Tungsten of daylight), the camera will show it as a color cast.
It's a similar 'problem' as with the eye's adaptation for light and dark areas in a scene. The camera doesn't alter the exposure dynamically thoughout the scene, our eyes do.
Cheers,
Bart
-
This all makes me wonder how on earth we managed back in the days of slide film - somehow a colour temperature of 5200K (at least for outdoor) seemed to work just fine in almost every outdoor situation. Don't get me wrong: I love digital, am not a Luddite and would never go back. However I sometimes think that one unfortunate side effect of digital is that we all spend far too much time worrying about things which don't really matter very much.
2 reasons how we managed.
1. By using filters (color correction and color compensating).
2. During the output process (either projection or print) color was adjusted.
Since we didn't have other options we just had to accept the result.
And speaking of WB related things which don't matter very much in the grand scheme of things: I live at high-ish altitude on the equator and have noticed that AWB tends to produce a reading 500K to 1000K below where it would be at sea level in more northern latitudes. For example a sunlit outdoor scene in Nairobi (~6000 feet, ~1 degree south of the Equator) might give me a AWB setting of about 4500K and a similar scene in southern England would give me around 5200K. Anyone have any idea of the physics behind this? Not that it matters very much.
It's possibly caused by secondary absorptions of the filter dyes in the sensor array's CFA. As a result Ultra-Violet exposure could boost the response of the Red sensitive sensels, or IR light could boost Blue response, it depends on the CFA characteristics. Also the strength of the IR filter in front of your camera's AA-filter can play a role. Whether that's the real cause requires further tests and may give different results on different camera models. You could try shooting with, and without, a UV filter and see how your camera responds. When you shoot a spectrally uniform reflecting target, you can easily repeat the test at different latitudes/heights.
Cheers,
Bart
-
I understand, but that's not how the human visual system works. We mentally correct (WB) the image, and our camera doesn't. That's why shadows look so blue in an image that's color balanced for daylight, and we didn't notice it when we looked at those same shadows as we shot the image. When we look at a piece of white paper, we will always see it as white, regardless of the dominant lightsource (Tungsten of daylight), the camera will show it as a color cast.
It's a similar 'problem' as with the eye's adaptation for light and dark areas in a scene. The camera doesn't alter the exposure dynamically thoughout the scene, our eyes do.
Cheers,
Bart
Yes, I am aware of the human issue... but what I am trying to do is avoid the 'correction'; for the sake of simplicity, let's assume I am trying to use the camera as a colorimeter: if the camera sees something as red, I want it to tell me "dude, this looks like red", instead of "dude, this looks like red, but I know the light was red, so it must be white".
-
If you know where "neutral" is with a grey or white card, or a color checker, or a whibal, and have some kind of grip on normal color temps during the day (or temps that you want) -- the temps of full sun at noon, open shade, cloudy, early morning/larger afternoon, etc., you should then be able to quickly dial in the actual color, instead of screwing around trying to get it by playing with sliders & etc.
That’s basically my take as well.
With a new camera I shoot the color checker chart at full noon sun in order to click-whitebalance the second gray in the Raw converter (ACR). Temp and Tint are saved as Own-Daylight-Preset. Some warmer and colder variants thereof are then created mainly by means of the Temperature slider but also by co-adjusting Tint in way that the Green channel stays well placed in between Red and Blue.
Nothing against "adjust to taste", but I think the subject matter it is also a question of calibration – at least to define the starting point. Whereas the Daylight preset "as shipped" does not even come close. Further, remember that daylight film with its fix response often enough just did it right (not always of course). So it's possible.
Reminds me of one of my very first posts elsewhere (http://www.prophotohome.com/forum/colour-management/51783-color-temperature.html).
Seems there always have been different opinions on this subject.
Peter
--
-
Indeed. Some folks seem to feel there are two "rules" of good landscape photography:
1. Only photograph early or late in the day because the light is so gorgeous then, and
2. Always set white balance with a WhiBal (or comparable) so you can destroy that beautiful light and make the scene look like mid-day.
I, too, stopped using my WhiBal after a few days once I realized I was no longer getting the sunset warmth that daylight film gave.
I agree: Season to taste!
Eric
Absolutely-that's the simple result of WB by card; everything is 'normalized' to mid-day, 5500K (or whatever!)
Here's a shot that has always intrigued me since I remmeber it well; a shot with DMR (who's color I really like, along with the Digilux 2 and the M9/M8 Leica really seems to try hard for an aesthetic look, maybe even filmic, and yes, maybe a BIT old fashioned, but to my eye quite good.)
Here's what the DMR did first; it was 5pm, sun in back, low on horizon-- the outdoor equivalent of Tungsten! LOL.
Then WB using the strip of white on the plane (pretty similar with the aluminium, but watch it, the grey isn't really grey)
Yes, it looks good, maybe better to some, but definitely loses the "late in day" look
Victor
PS GREAT comments here; we are getting away from the tech, back to the "art" approach to photography. Michael, Kudos for seeing the importance of this!
-
Absolutely-that's the simple result of WB by card; everything is 'normalized' to mid-day, 5500K (or whatever!)
That's just one use of a WB card, when the colors must be right. More common is to use the WB card as a basis to depart from along the color temperature path, without ugly green or magenta tint.
Cheers,
Bart
-
That's just one use of a WB card, when the colors must be right. More common is to use the WB card as a basis to depart from along the color temperature path, without ugly green or magenta tint.
Cheers,
Bart
Hmmm... You raise an interesting point. When a WB card is in the image, we can do a lot with it..take out a color cast, or a 'mixed light' like fluorescent and tungsten..
However, my understanding was that the 'eyedropper' in most applications assumes that the pixel selected (or is it a group?) is either x,x,x for RGB or follows a Plank distribution for 5500K. These are not the same, since sunlight is roughly a 'black body' at 5500K and R and B are lower than G in emissivity. However, we mostly get white/grey as x,x,x yes?
Why not an 'ambient light' eyedropper? that is, select the WB card and tell it the car is illuminated by tungsten (2800K?) and will adjust accordingly.(say white as 240, 220,200)
That way green/magenta casts will be corrected but the image wont turn a warm lamp lighted image into a bluish 'daylight' look.
The bottom line is that I find in C1 esp I scroll through the profiles for the appropriate 'look' for the image. It is almost always 'warmer' than a WB gives.
Bart, since you raised the issue, do you have an idea how the WB could be used in say PS or C1 to remove color cast but preserve th 'as shot' look?
best regards
Victor
-
Hmmm... You raise an interesting point. When a WB card is in the image, we can do a lot with it..take out a color cast, or a 'mixed light' like fluorescent and tungsten..
However, my understanding was that the 'eyedropper' in most applications assumes that the pixel selected (or is it a group?) is either x,x,x for RGB or follows a Plank distribution for 5500K. These are not the same, since sunlight is roughly a 'black body' at 5500K and R and B are lower than G in emissivity. However, we mostly get white/grey as x,x,x yes?
Hi Victor,
The white balancing by eyedropper results in R=G=B. If the subject clicked on was spectrally neutral, i.e. it reflects all wavelengths that may fall on it in the exact same proportions, then all other neutral reflecting objects receiving the same light will also be neutral, and colored objects will retain their actual reflection color (assuming the sensor arrays has a neutral response to all wavelengths involved).
Why not an 'ambient light' eyedropper? that is, select the WB card and tell it the car is illuminated by tungsten (2800K?) and will adjust accordingly.(say white as 240, 220,200)
That way green/magenta casts will be corrected but the image wont turn a warm lamp lighted image into a bluish 'daylight' look.
The bottom line is that I find in C1 esp I scroll through the profiles for the appropriate 'look' for the image. It is almost always 'warmer' than a WB gives.
It's easier to make a neutral WB and change it with the temperature slider to taste. Ambient light is not only caused by the illuminant (which may have a discontinuous spectral output), but it also contains reflected/transmitted light from other objects in the area.
As an example consider an object of a given color, under a blue sky with direct sunlight falling on the object from one side, on a grass lawn. The ambient light will be a mix from direct sunlight filtered by the atmosphere together with some blue sky on one side together with the reflection of the grass (the percentage of the reflection reduces with the distance of the object above the ground). The part that's on the shadow side will lack the direct filtered sunlight but have an increased percentage of blue from the sky together with the grass.
Bart, since you raised the issue, do you have an idea how the WB could be used in say PS or C1 to remove color cast but preserve th 'as shot' look?
I haven't given it any thought before because it's impractical to what I want to achieve (an accurate baseline color balance or accurate colors), but perhaps you can do something in C1 with the Skin Tone control, e.g. by sampling something lit by different (filtered) lightsources, or a chart with colored (simulated blackbody) patches. As the C1 'manual' says:"The Skin Tone tool is created to adjust a selected color to an already defined color. by adjusting the white balance of the capture.". So you could define an off-white color as neutral and presumably the other colors will folow that shift. It won't solve the issue of mixed ambient light though, it will just create a WB shift.
Cheers,
Bart
-
This all makes me wonder how on earth we managed back in the days of slide film - somehow a colour temperature of 5200K (at least for outdoor) seemed to work just fine in almost every outdoor situation. Don't get me wrong: I love digital, am not a Luddite and would never go back. However I sometimes think that one unfortunate side effect of digital is that we all spend far too much time worrying about things which don't really matter very much.
And speaking of WB related things which don't matter very much in the grand scheme of things: I live at high-ish altitude on the equator and have noticed that AWB tends to produce a reading 500K to 1000K below where it would be at sea level in more northern latitudes. For example a sunlit outdoor scene in Nairobi (~6000 feet, ~1 degree south of the Equator) might give me a AWB setting of about 4500K and a similar scene in southern England would give me around 5200K. Anyone have any idea of the physics behind this? Not that it matters very much.
Ed
I agree. Some of the shooters over on the getdpi forums recommended something to me that has freed me up quite a bit.....I only shoot in with either daylight WB or tungsten WB! This method reminds me much more of shooting film, and gives me a sense as to how the camera handles certain scenes. Of course, I can always adjust WB in raw if need be, but I try to leave it alone for the most part. My whiBAL has been relegated to studio shoots only, just in case.
-
I'm very much agreeing with Michael, and I think we shouldn't turn WB into a science when the objective is to make a pleasing picture.
However I still use my WhiBal regularly to have a starting point which is close to 'neutral' and then adjust to make the picture look as I want it. I find that if I do not have a WhiBal reference that my pictures over the time of a PP session will develop some kind of color cast, not so much on the Temperature scale, but more on the green-magenta scale.
-
I'm very much agreeing with Michael, and I think we shouldn't turn WB into a science when the objective is to make a pleasing picture.
However I still use my WhiBal regularly to have a starting point which is close to 'neutral' and then adjust to make the picture look as I want it. I find that if I do not have a WhiBal reference that my pictures over the time of a PP session will develop some kind of color cast, not so much on the Temperature scale, but more on the green-magenta scale.
That's right, our eyes adapt and it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid a bias, especially when our viewing conditions during post-processing are suboptimal (think brightly colored shirts or mixed room lighting with a different color temperature that our display calibration). It only makes sense to occasionaly include a WB reference during a series of shots to keep us on track. I find it only too easy to gradually create more magenta images than I intended. Color temperature is used to set the atmosphere in the image if the colors don't need absolute accuracy.
Cheers,
Bart
-
I use WhiBal as a starting point, then I season color as I like. But it is a good article it can be tempting to always have exact "correct" whitebalance.
-
I'm not sure why you need a grey card at all ...
Since you seem to recognize that the 'right' white balance is the one that looks the most pleasing to you relative to your intended output, why not leave the grey card at home?
I agree. the only time the card is useful is in specific situations where having a good starting or reference point would be helpful. For example when I was shooting in Petra and most of my shots were of red/orange rock formations and blue sky. Very little white/black/grey subject matter. Problem is compounded when some of the shots are taken in complete shade, complete bright sunlight (at varying times of the day), cloud and then shots with both sunny and shady elements. It is difficult to find a good starting point when selecting an appropriate w/b. I found that after processing individual shots that the rocks seemed of varying orange/red or green/magenta. Using a grey card would have provided me with a useful starting point in that situation.
The card would have definitely helped when I shot in Wadi Rum - a desert where the rocks and sands are of varying shades of orange, red and yellow.
-
These types of shooting scenarios can also happen in urban surroundings with colored buildings, or under mixed lighting (especially when discontinuous spectral lightsources are added to the mix).
Cheers,
Bart
As well as in the situation I described above.
-
I stopped caring about "correct" white balance too much after I understood,
that always shooting a metamerism free grey card and/or a colorchecker
simply helps me to completely destroy the light atmosphere.
Congratulations! You are now an official recovered WB Abuser.
Some references to support your decision:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....st&p=341597 (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=40883&view=findpost&p=341597)
http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00VNcE (http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00VNcE)
What I do now is to look how the color would look if I use the grey card for white balance and how the whitebalance
would be changed if I used the daylight setting in the RAW converter. So I get a sort of measurement of the color
temperature at shooting time and can now moderately adjust the whitebalance between the extreme color of the non
whitebalancing daylight setting and the neutralizing greycard mode and adjust it somewhere in between to my liking.
As others have suggested, you don't need the gray card. Instead, in Raw conversion, rely upon your memory and/or taste.
"The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways." - AA
Still true by replacing "negative" with "sensor capture", and add "or jpeg" after "print".
-
Congratulations! You are now an official recovered WB Abuser.
Some references to support your decision:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....st&p=341597 (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=40883&view=findpost&p=341597)
http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00VNcE (http://photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00VNcE)
As others have suggested, you don't need the gray card. Instead, in Raw conversion, rely upon your memory and/or taste.
"The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways." - AA
Still true by replacing "negative" with "sensor capture", and add "or jpeg" after "print".
Right on!
I suspect that much of the longing for film we keep hearing about results from the over-use of so-called "correct" white balance.
I'm sure if AA were around now, he would have lots to say about how to get the right white balance for the mood you want to create (or recreate).
Eric
-
Congratulations! You are now an official recovered WB Abuser.
-
I suspect that much of the longing for film we keep hearing about results from the over-use of so-called "correct" white balance.
I'm sure if AA were around now, he would have lots to say about how to get the right white balance for the mood you want to create (or recreate).
The use and mis-use of WB is a good example of what digital imaging brings. Like many digital tools and features, it is wonderful when used appropriately and horrible when used wrong. I attribute why many users mis-use these features and tools to the following:
- the vendors tell them they must have them
- after money spent, why not use them when they are there
- books and tutorials tell them they will solve their problems, without any context
- they hope that these will finally make them better photographers
Some photographers, like this one, got it right and stopped climbing the digital hamster wheel and returned to being photographers.
http://www.huntingtonwitherill.com/pdf/Hamster_Wheel.pdf (http://www.huntingtonwitherill.com/pdf/Hamster_Wheel.pdf)
-
The use and mis-use of WB is a good example of what digital imaging brings. Like many digital tools and features, it is wonderful when used appropriately and horrible when used wrong. I attribute why many users mis-use these features and tools to the following:
- the vendors tell them they must have them
- after money spent, why not use them when they are there
- books and tutorials tell them they will solve their problems, without any context
- they hope that these will finally make them better photographers
Some photographers, like this one, got it right and stopped climbing the digital hamster wheel and returned to being photographers.
http://www.huntingtonwitherill.com/pdf/Hamster_Wheel.pdf (http://www.huntingtonwitherill.com/pdf/Hamster_Wheel.pdf)
Indeed.
Witherill does gorgeous work.
Eric