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Author Topic: White Balance  (Read 4985 times)

Rendezvous

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White Balance
« on: January 27, 2013, 09:11:05 pm »

When I set custom white balance in the camera, I don't seem to get consistent colours across a few photos. It appears that the green/magenta slider (in Lightroom) is set to a different spot each time. Why is this?

Stephen G

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #1 on: January 28, 2013, 12:44:48 am »

You set the tint slider to a different spot to achieve consistency OR the photos import with the tint slider at a different spot, even though the camera setting is unchanged?
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Bryan Conner

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #2 on: January 28, 2013, 01:00:48 am »

Make sure that the White Balance drop down is set to "As Shot" in Lightroom and not "Auto" or anything else.
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Ellis Vener

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #3 on: January 28, 2013, 08:56:17 am »

When I set custom white balance in the camera, I don't seem to get consistent colours across a few photos. It appears that the green/magenta slider (in Lightroom) is set to a different spot each time. Why is this?
Were you shooting under fluorescent or mercury vapor lights? If so and were using shutter speeds shorter than 1/30th you may have caught different parts of the lights' ballast cycle.
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digitaldog

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #4 on: January 28, 2013, 10:29:28 am »

When I set custom white balance in the camera, I don't seem to get consistent colours across a few photos. It appears that the green/magenta slider (in Lightroom) is set to a different spot each time. Why is this?

Any WB value (in CCT Kelvin) is a range of colors. Plus each converter will produce different values as part of the entire process which is unique so it's not uncommon to see the numbers out of sync. The WB the camera could use on raw to produce a JPEG is just different than what another raw converter might show. Don't get too caught up in specific numbers, WB to visual taste as well (the reason we have those nice sliders in LR).
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Rendezvous

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #5 on: January 28, 2013, 05:17:52 pm »

Thanks for the replies. I am shooting in RAW, outdoors in sunlight. The WB in the camera is on manual, I think it was 5700K (not that the setting is relevant). In Lightroom the WB is set on "as shot", however the tint slider is in a different place (slightly) as I go through the photos.

stamper

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #6 on: January 29, 2013, 05:12:35 am »

In the March edition of Practical Photographer UK a long article on WB. The author starts the article emphasising that it is important to set the correct WB in camera. Near the end he then states " Striving for a strictly accurate and neutral colour isn't always the best approach" A waste of two pages in the magazine imo. ::)

sandymc

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2013, 08:13:44 am »

Thanks for the replies. I am shooting in RAW, outdoors in sunlight. The WB in the camera is on manual, I think it was 5700K (not that the setting is relevant). In Lightroom the WB is set on "as shot", however the tint slider is in a different place (slightly) as I go through the photos.

Are you using the same Camera Profile for all shots? - WB changes with profile.

Sandy
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Stephen G

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #8 on: January 29, 2013, 09:35:43 am »

Thanks for the replies. I am shooting in RAW, outdoors in sunlight. The WB in the camera is on manual, I think it was 5700K (not that the setting is relevant). In Lightroom the WB is set on "as shot", however the tint slider is in a different place (slightly) as I go through the photos.

Is it a problem or just a curiosity you'd like to learn more about? I think I saw behaviour like this in some shots of mine from a few weeks back, but almost all of the shots were chucked so I don't have enough left to be sure of it. [Edit: I'm also not sure now that the camera was consistently set on the custom WB]. I tried to replicate it this morning, to no avail. I set a custom WB in camera and the WB in LR was identical across the shots I took.

What version of LR are you using?
« Last Edit: January 29, 2013, 09:46:56 am by Stephen G »
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digitaldog

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #9 on: January 29, 2013, 10:25:18 am »

Thanks for the replies. I am shooting in RAW, outdoors in sunlight. The WB in the camera is on manual, I think it was 5700K (not that the setting is relevant). In Lightroom the WB is set on "as shot", however the tint slider is in a different place (slightly) as I go through the photos.

As Shot is LR's interpretation of WB based on the camera metadata. IOW, the term (as shot) is telling you that whatever metadata tag the camera thinks is the WB (correct, close or a mile off) is what LR will use to build it's rendering which is raw converter specific. If the metadata changes, the LR numbers can as well. But the numbers are pretty meaningless unless you're viewing them in a very broad sense. What looks good on the calibrated display is what really counts. Color in context is kind of important.
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bjanes

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #10 on: January 29, 2013, 05:50:24 pm »

When I set custom white balance in the camera, I don't seem to get consistent colours across a few photos. It appears that the green/magenta slider (in Lightroom) is set to a different spot each time. Why is this?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about your white balance variability, and your experience does not agree with mine.

I just reviewed a series of 140 (selective images, perhaps 20) shots of one of my son's basketball games taken with the Nikon D3 with a pre-set read off of a WhiBal card. The illumination was metal halide. The ACR white balance reading was 3450 tint -3 without any variation at all. In another series of shots with flash and the WB on the D800e set to flash WB, all images gave WB readings of 5650K tint +16. Another series of shots with the D800e with the camera set to sunlight, all readings in ACR were 5050K tint +8.

If you set the camera to auto, there will be variations according to the scene and light conditions.

In another series of shots just for this post, I set WB on the 800e to 5500K and took shots under daylight and tungsten illumination. The ACR WB of all shots was 5340K tint +6, with no variation whatsoever.

Perhaps you could post a few rawfiles for others to check (use Yousendit or one of the Cloud sites that permit sharing of large files such as Microsoft Skydrive).

Regards,

Bill
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jeremypayne

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2013, 07:58:00 pm »

There seems to be a lot of confusion about your white balance variability, and your experience does not agree with mine.

Same here.  D700 -> Lightroom gives a consistent As Shot reading if the camera is set to a particular custom WB.
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Vladimirovich

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #12 on: January 29, 2013, 09:40:50 pm »

did he actually say what was his camera ? may be his particular make/model is an exotic one and acts differently in terms what is written to raw files even if camera set to a particular WB mode (non Auto).
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Rendezvous

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Re: White Balance
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2013, 01:55:10 am »

I'm using a 60D. I shoot raw and import to DNG. This topic isn't causing me any issues as such, I just noticed some differences and wondered why. I have noticed that if I have say 5200K set in the camera, this may show up as 5150 in Lightroom. What I was asking about was only the tint. I notice there is no way to manually set the tint like you can set the white balance value. Either the camera records a different tint each image, or Lightroom chooses it(?) differently after import.

Generally the Lightroom profile I use is the Canon neutral, with no auto white balance or auto tone.
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