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Archive 2008 · How are you doing white balance?

dcmiller
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p.1 #1 · How are you doing white balance?

Talking about color characteristics of different lenses got me thinking about white balance and exposure. I really like the Photovision target I have. Better than the actual target is the DVD tutorial that comes with it.

Photodisk 14" calibration target

Previously I used a white sheet of paper (which I now know is blueish white) or a gray card. What do you do?

Dec 11, 2008 at 04:42 PM

Ben Horne
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p.1 #2 · How are you doing white balance?

I just shoot RAW and tweak it afterward. May times, the technically accurate WB is not the ideal WB.

Dec 11, 2008 at 04:43 PM

dcmiller
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p.1 #3 · How are you doing white balance?

I would argue that 1) tone setting is difficult 2) its better to leave the white balance alone and use PS filters for color.

But what you do is probably concerned more with stylized color than most of what I do.

Dec 11, 2008 at 04:48 PM

shirozina
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p.1 #4 · How are you doing white balance?

Shoot RAW, adjust the colour balance to remove any colour banding around highlights and then correct the overal colour balance in Photoshop with curves.

Dec 11, 2008 at 05:01 PM

rico
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p.1 #5 · How are you doing white balance?

I shoot JPEG with manual color setting, then finalize in post. As Ben says, there is no "correct" CB, firstly because mood is an artistic decision and, secondly, most scenes have multiple light sources of differing color temp. Even in studio, balancing K between lights is a bitch.

Dec 12, 2008 at 07:58 AM

trumpet_guy
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p.1 #6 · How are you doing white balance?

I shoot RAW. If I'm shooting skin tones and want the color balance accurate (sometimes warmer tones
look better than strictly accurate color balance) I shoot with a WhiBal (gray) card in the shot and
it's then trivial to balance the color in DPP. Photoshop can do decently in JPEG with the same approach.

Dec 12, 2008 at 06:37 PM

edwardkaraa
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p.1 #7 · How are you doing white balance?

rico wrote:
As Ben says, there is no "correct" CB, firstly because mood is an artistic decision and, secondly, most scenes have multiple light sources of differing color temp. Even in studio, balancing K between lights is a bitch.

+1

I try to leave CB at daylight whenever possible because slightly warm or cool tones are more attractive than absolute neutral. If I don't like the result with daylight, I can always select something else with DPP. I also find that my Contax lenses produce the best colors with daylight setting. If I'm shooting art reproduction, I use a macbeth mini colorchecker.

Dec 12, 2008 at 06:47 PM

Scott Clark
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p.1 #8 · How are you doing white balance?

Ben Horne wrote:
I just shoot RAW and tweak it afterward. May times, the technically accurate WB is not the ideal WB.

X2. I never bother to set WB in camera...I just leave it on auto (which always seems to be wrong) and fix it in LR after I import.

Dec 13, 2008 at 05:37 AM

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