White balance

Paul11 · 28 May 2008 at 15:55

following on from the threads on ISO and exposure: i thought it would be nice to have one on white balance .

how do you all go about settings for wb.. is it just use RAW and ignore the wb?

do you change the wb settings often or just leave it on a preffered setting ?

do you use custom wb ?

how often during a day out taking pics would you change it?

thanks

33L · 28 May 2008 at 16:15

if i can i use custom white balance i use it where possible. If indoors then its a must to get rid of the yellow tint from tungsten lights. outdoors especialy when moving abot a lot i let the AWB do its thing!

Inquisitor · 28 May 2008 at 16:24

I practically always shoot RAW, but if I'm not then I'll usually have it on AWB, unless the lighting is particularly strongly tinted.

Mint_Sauce · 28 May 2008 at 16:27

I set my white balance manually, I shoot RAW and whilst I could change it in lightroom I like to view the images on the camera screen before I get home so don't want yellow or blue tinted pictures! Also I find that the cameras white balance settings are very slightly better than Lightrooms.

33L · 28 May 2008 at 18:53

i shoot raw but set the white balance so its one less thing to do after! after all it takes a moment to set it and getting it just right is an art in itself in a raw editor.

glitch · 28 May 2008 at 19:20

Paulus said:
how do you all go about settings for wb.. is it just use RAW and ignore the wb?

If you can shoot with RAW then I'd strongly recommend you do so, providing you can get your hands on a suitable RAW editing suite.

On occasion I'll go through the hassle of measuring the light temp and setting a manual white balance on my camera, but for the most part I'll stick with one of the many presets and then adjust manually when I'm processing the images.

Having a very accurately calibrated monitor helps in such situations as you take all the guesswork out of setting your WB and can confidently adjust your image accordingly.