White Balancing

[Fstop Manalo]

Hey people, I was just wondering, is it good to always use Auto White Balancing? or using the white balance option a lot more than auto?

If u chose the 2nd opt, please help me w/ what light should it be used on, I sometimes use fluorescent option on a house w/ flourescent lights but the picture looked kinda dull and.... Blank.

Please Reply, THANK YOU!

[Manfred M]

Hey people, I was just wondering, is it good to always use Auto White Balancing? or using the white balance option a lot more than auto?

If u chose the 2nd opt, please help me w/ what light should it be used on, I sometimes use fluorescent option on a house w/ flourescent lights but the picture looked kinda dull and.... Blank.

Please Reply, THANK YOU!

It depends on what you are trying to do and the type of shooting you are doing. As an example; I always play around with my manual white balance in mixed light situations. An example would be an interior shot taken near large windows where you get a combination of different light sources. Sunset shots, I play around with different white balance settings all the time. If I do studio shots, I will do a custom white balance for sure. If I'm doing casusal shooting, auto is usually good enough.

As for manual white balance; get a good white balance target and make sure that you are shooting using the same lighting that you will be shooting the scene under.

[Mike Buckley]

For everyday walkaround shooting in which the ideal white balance might be constantly changing, the answer to your question may depend on the quality of your camera's auto white balance. On my Nikon D50 and D80, I always used a preset white balance such as "sunny," "cloudy," or "shade," that rendered the best results when viewing the image on the camera's LCD. On my Nikon D7000, the quality of the auto white balance setting is so much more accurate that I rarely use any other setting.

[DanK]

It depends in part on your camera. For example, on mine, AWB does not do as well as "cloudy" on cloudy days. However, the best bet is to shoot raw, so you can adjust this later. And if the lighting is tricky, make sure to take a shot with a spectrally neutral card, like a whiBal, so that you have a neutral target for adjusting white balance later.

[Glenn NK]

Raul:

First, if you haven't already, I suggest reading this carefully:

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...te-balance.htm

Then (if you are shooting in difficult lighting situations such as artificial light) my personal suggestion is to set your camera to shoot RAW, not JPEG.

With RAW, the white balance setting can be very easily changed when you process the files.

With JPEG, this task is more difficult and not as effective (a JPEG file has the white balance "cooked" into the final image file - with RAW, it is not).

Outdoors at times when the colour of the light changes (sunrise, sunset, shade, cloudy day), then the safest is to use Auto and shoot RAW.

I personally always have my cameras set to Auto and always shoot RAW. I never worry about the light colour because I can adjust for it when processing files. And I usually do.

Glenn

[Fstop Manalo]

Hey, thanks for the link. I cant find that link while checking CIC out. haha.

[Glenn NK]

Hey, thanks for the link. I cant find that link while checking CIC out. haha.

Open another window?

Glenn

[drjuice]

... I cant find that link while checking CIC out. haha.

The problem is probably the ellipsis (the ...) in the middle of the URI. Try using this:

www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm

which is what got me there.

v