How do you set colour balance in the dark.

[arith]

I've tried to set the colour balance in this without much success. Initially I made the mistake of pointing the camera away to take the balance off a grey card; my mind is like mud sometimes.



I found this on the internet probably taken with a flash.

http://www.mikekemble.com/daytrip/li...ichfield45.jpg

Generally I would like to know how to set custom colour balance for say the moon; do I turn the camera pointing away from the moon to get the light on the card, or what?

[Jim B.]

Here's a nice tutorial on photographing the moon.I have photographed the moon,but don't have any examples handy.Setting WB to daylight works fine for moon shots.
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/SETTINGS.HTM

[Steve S]

Originally Posted by arith

I've tried to set the colour balance in this without much success. Initially I made the mistake of pointing the camera away to take the balance off a grey card; my mind is like mud sometimes.



I found this on the internet probably taken with a flash.

http://www.mikekemble.com/daytrip/li...ichfield45.jpg

Generally I would like to know how to set custom colour balance for say the moon; do I turn the camera pointing away from the moon to get the light on the card, or what?

Set it on auto and take a sample shot.....................then look at your RGB histograms. When the right side of each is even the WB is neutral. My camera has a WB shift feature. Just shift it where you like it.

[arith]

Originally Posted by Steve S

Set it on auto and take a sample shot.....................then look at your RGB histograms. When the right side of each is even the WB is neutral. My camera has a WB shift feature. Just shift it where you like it.

I didn't think of that; good idea and certainly better than a guess, and, I like the info about the moon shot since I like taking photo's in the dark.

When I can get up

[Amberglass]

You can also set your camera's WB on K for Kelvin and adjust from there from cooler to warmer. If you use the WB shift feature, make sure you put it back to the original settings.

[Colin Southern]

Originally Posted by Amberglass

You can also set your camera's WB on K for Kelvin and adjust from there from cooler to warmer.

Thought of the moment - on the 1Ds3 you can do this with LiveView - presumably other Canon LiveView models as well (although pretty much just as easy to adjust afterwards with a RAW converter).

[Colin Southern]

Originally Posted by arith

I didn't think of that; good idea and certainly better than a guess, and, I like the info about the moon shot since I like taking photo's in the dark.

When I can get up

Just a couple of thoughts -- white balancing adjusts the colour in a shot so that it's as if the illuminant is pure white light - but there's often a big difference between what's technically correct and what's visually correct; the classic being a portrait taken by candle light - you'd expect the light from a candle to be yellowish - so you wouldn't want to white-balance it.

With regards to the moon - I imageing that if it's in full view on a clear night then it's colour temperature wouldn't change - so hopefully someone could come up with the exact temperature that could simply be dialed in.

Update: a quick "google" suggested a colour temp of around 4000 to 4125 Kelvin.

[arith]

Originally Posted by Colin Southern

Thought of the moment - on the 1Ds3 you can do this with LiveView - presumably other Canon LiveView models as well (although pretty much just as easy to adjust afterwards with a RAW converter).

These are RAW and is HDR for noise reduction. They are put into picturenaut which generates a TIFF file. It is this I try to adjust white balance on.

But that was wrong and now I adjust the RAW to make TIFF, but this means manual adjustment of settings and is a nuisance.

This is what came out, but with one hot pixel removed which I shouldn't do with a painting but well.

[ashwin]

Originally Posted by arith

I've tried to set the colour balance in this without much success. Initially I made the mistake of pointing the camera away to take the balance off a grey card; my mind is like mud sometimes.

I found this on the internet probably taken with a flash.

Generally I would like to know how to set custom colour balance for say the moon; do I turn the camera pointing away from the moon to get the light on the card, or what?

Image is over saturated.,and lacks contrast.... desaturate and duplicate the layer, change the mode to SOFT LIGHT., in colour balance reduce some red and within 10 sec this is the final pircture...