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FMera
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p.1 #1 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

For those who shoot in Raw do you normally adjust the white balance manually during the shoot or do you adjust it using photo editing software at a later time?

I am currently using the Auto White Balance setting and adjusting it later. I am trying to get the best shots possible. I would like to get some tips and advice from everyone.

Thanks

Aug 04, 2012 at 03:41 PM

Gunzorro
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p.1 #2 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I use AWB in-camera and make adjustments in PP, unless I'm shooting under "unusual" light, such as tungsten or fluorescent. For non-daylight, I switch to closest settings, or do a custom WB if it's going to remain the same throughout the shoot.

Aug 04, 2012 at 03:44 PM

Paulthelefty
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p.1 #3 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

If I am shooting outdoors and partly cloudy, I will go to Av mode and AWB due to the rapidly changing lighting conditions. Otherwise I prefer to set the WB to whatever is appropriate, so even if it's wrong, everything is off by the same amount. Of course syncing in LR fixes all that easily as well. Shooting motocross, I can get some funky AWB occasionally because of all the bright colors of the riders and their bikes. That is my main reason for locking WB in, not that it is right, but it works for me.

Paul

Aug 04, 2012 at 04:01 PM

Glenn NK
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p.1 #4 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I never take the WB setting off AWB. The white balance isn't "cooked" into a RAW file, and I usually know what the image should look like (calibrated monitor and good colour recognition perhaps), so I change as required in PP. And there are times when a WB change in PP is used for effect to accent a mood.

There are also "unusual" light conditions in daylight (which Paul referred to) - with dominant colours, or when part of the scene is in full sun and part in shade - something is going to be off. This is in part why I gave up on using a WB card.

Glenn

Aug 04, 2012 at 04:29 PM

EB-1
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p.1 #5 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I set it manually to something reasonable for the light.

EBH

Aug 04, 2012 at 04:31 PM

JohnBrose
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p.1 #6 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I typically set it to the wb it should be and then make corrections while processing if I need to. I do want the vast majority not to need correcting though. It also helps if I'm shooting people and show them how they are doing to have a good white balance.

Aug 04, 2012 at 04:40 PM

gdanmitchell
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p.1 #7 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

These settings do not alter the raw file color balance. The raw file, more or less, is just "what the sensor saw"- e.g. the raw sensor data for luminosity from the photo sites.

I adjust in post. There are a few ways to approach this. One is what I think of as sort of the "scientific method." Here you might place a gray card into the scene so that you can get a true gray via adjustments in post. In some commercial applications, where color consistency could be critical, this can be a good approach. But, frankly, it has little value for lots of other kinds of photography, where using your judgment to make adjustments in post is more likely to produce the quality you want.

The second approach is what might be called the "subjective method." There are a bunch of things you can try, depending upon the photograph and depending upon what effect you want. Objective realism is rarely, if ever, your goal. The real goal is something that is effective and believable. (Exceptions noted for highly subjective approaches.) I'll start in ACR by trying various default settings - original, daylight, automatic, etc - just to see what they look like. I will also tweak the color temperature slider a bit to taste. (Obviously, it is critical to have a calibrated monitor!) Once in photoshop, things can vary from simple to quite complex - so I won't try to explain the entire process.

One valuable approach that I and a number of other photographers use is to try to find an area in the image that should be more or less gray and use that as a target point. I like to use a curve layer. I select the gray eyedropper tool and click on various points in the image that are almost any shade of gray besides pure black or pure white and observe how this changes in image. Eventually I usually find something that is close, and I often temper the effect by using the opacity slider on the curve layer.

With many images that contain multiple light sources that you cannot control, it can be necessary to use masks to adjust various areas of the image separately.

Basically, I don't ever even think about camera color settings, much less AWB.

Dan

Aug 04, 2012 at 04:55 PM

jerrykur
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p.1 #8 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I used to fix color temp in some difficult cases, ex. mixed incandescent and florescent lights. But with the 5DMK3 I have largely quit doing that because the AWB gets really close to what I would do in post. In some cases, I find myself making a color change in post and then removing it because I like the camera's value better.

I still on occasion use my color checker card, but I am finding I am reaching for that less and less.

Aug 04, 2012 at 05:02 PM

twistedlim
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p.1 #9 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Adjust in post, but I must say the 5d3 hits auto wb closer than any canon I have shot. I need very little tweaking in post.

Aug 04, 2012 at 05:38 PM

anscochrome
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p.1 #10 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I approach it two ways. For daylight shooting, I set my white balance for 5500K in Lightroom when processing, since that is the balance of old slide films. That way, if shooting near sunrise or sunset time, I maintain the warmth from the "incorrect" white balance. Color corrected shots late in the day with long shadows just do not look right to me

For available light shooting, I use uni white balance, and set my exposure so the red channel is just shy of clipping. When I use auto white balance in LR on these greenish looking files, the rendered wite balance LR comes up with looks remarkably good!

Aug 04, 2012 at 05:51 PM

Monito
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p.1 #11 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Always do the WB in conversion, though most often Automatic in conversion is just fine for most work, unless important skin tones (portraits) are required or colours have to matched (brands, catalog, fashion, etc.).

Leave the WB on AWB when shooting Raw, since the Raw ignores WB, unless ...

... unless you are doing very finicky EttR where you have calibrated your camera and your reading of the HistoBlinkyMeter (LCD with histograms). In that case, approximate the WB in the camera as well as you can just so the HistoBlinkyMeter more accurately indicates the result after WB is done in conversion.

Aug 04, 2012 at 05:59 PM

stargazer78
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p.1 #12 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

FMera wrote:
For those who shoot in Raw do you normally adjust the white balance manually during the shoot or do you adjust it using photo editing software at a later time?

I am currently using the Auto White Balance setting and adjusting it later. I am trying to get the best shots possible. I would like to get some tips and advice from everyone.

With RAW, there's no advantage to setting Auto White Balance (AWB) before an exposure, as opposed to doing it during post processing. The results are identical.

If the lighting condition is difficult, I find it best to set a custom white balance before I start an exposure. It only takes a few seconds to calibrate your Custom WB with a gray card or whatnot. It's certainly faster than trying to "fix" white balance in post.

Aug 04, 2012 at 06:13 PM

Ed Peters
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p.1 #13 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Gunzorro wrote:
I use AWB in-camera and make adjustments in PP, unless I'm shooting under "unusual" light, such as tungsten or fluorescent. For non-daylight, I switch to closest settings, or do a custom WB if it's going to remain the same throughout the shoot.
+1

Aug 04, 2012 at 06:47 PM

Breitling65
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p.1 #14 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Canon slrs are good to use Auto WB, it is very easy to fix later in LR for example if not perfect. It was nightmare for me shooting with Olympus slr, raw doesn't help much there.

Edited on Aug 04, 2012 at 09:00 PM · View previous versions

Aug 04, 2012 at 07:49 PM

cgardner
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p.1 #15 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

With RAW WB can be adjusted in PP and having it consistent across all shots allows correcting one, then batch copy / paste the metadata to others in the same batch.

AWB changes WB with each shot and lacks that consistent baseline. Better to shoot with a pre-set for consistency, then batch correct. That way all files wind up with the same corrected WB

Using a gray card in a reference shot simplifies PP evaluation. By clicking on the card image the shot gets "snapped" to neutral. Before/After comparison will made it easier to see color biases, such as green from grass or overhead trees or cooler shade.

Aug 04, 2012 at 08:02 PM

impreza_GC8
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p.1 #16 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Maybe I'm just lazy but I haven't taken my cameras off AWB when shooting stills for years now. Back in the day it was necessary but even my 1Dmk2's (vintage 2005) were pretty decent at figuring it out. My 1Dmk4 is spot on most of the time.
Especially given the fact that you can change the Color Balance in RAW PP I see no reason to concern myself with manually adjusting it 99.9% of the time.

Aug 05, 2012 at 07:46 PM

Bullseye5d2
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p.1 #17 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I shoot in AWB and adjust in post.

Depending on what I shoot I sometimes use a gray card

Aug 05, 2012 at 08:50 PM

Photon
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p.1 #18 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

I usually shoot in AWB and adjust in Lightroom. If the scene is tricky, I try to get a calibration shot with a gray reference in the main light of the scene. When I shoot portraits in studio, I sometimes set a custom white balance so that the clients will see good skin tones if I show them a preview on the LCD.

Aug 05, 2012 at 11:07 PM

Deborah Kolt
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p.1 #19 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Indoors I always set the temperature in Kelvin. Outdoors, I set the Kelvin about 75-80% of the time. Only in extremely changeable light do I resort to AWB. No way I can spend all that time tweaking every frame.

Aug 06, 2012 at 02:00 AM

CW100
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p.1 #20 · To Canon Raw Shooters - WB Question - Advice

Bullseye5d2 wrote:
I shoot in AWB and adjust in post.

same here

Aug 06, 2012 at 11:53 AM

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