White balance

[Jodi Reeves]

I am a Am. photograher and feel as if I have learned aperture, shutter
speed, light adjustments on my camera. I really feel that the next
thing for me to learn to do in camera is the white balance. Of course
my camera has the preset default but it also be adjusted. I have
always let the camera choose what it wanted to do on this. As that I
felt that the other areas were very important to learn and to get down
with out thinking. Can you explain how this is used, why to adjust
this ect...?

[Steve Parrott]

As this question came to the group I will jump in and answer since I
happen to be here at the moment. I'm sure Jeff will want to add some
more info and maybe correct something I may say too! :-)

Light has "temperature" expressed in Kelvin degrees. These temps can
range from aprx. 1500K for candlelight, to aprx. 5500K for sunny
daylight around noon, to aprx. 9000k for a blue sky. The key word there
is approximate. There will always be some variation. This is where the
presets on the camera often do more harm than good. They are just
present K temps for various conditions... sometimes they are pretty
close, other times they can be pretty far off. Sometimes the AUTO white
balance setting can do better than the presets, sometimes not.

So, for the most correct color in your photo, you should do a custom
white balance. You are allowing the camera to take a reading of the
light as it exists at that very moment, and set that value into your
camera. Now... this is my personal take on doing custom white balance
with the camera. It is a pain in the butt.... at least it is with a
Canon. Way too many buttons to push and menus to navigate. Why this is
not a simple one button push procedure I will never understand.

The EXPO DISC method is supposed to do well, but it is an incident
reading. In other words, you have to mount the disc on your lens, then
go to your subject, and aim the camera to the light source to take the
reading. You then have to go through the whole in camera custom white
balance setting procedure.. again... a pain.

So what I do is use a grey card. I have a card about credit card size.
Whenever I am in new light, I just take one photo with the card in the
scene, then shoot with the white balance in AUTO. (Shooting in RAW of
course). Then in post processing in the RAW converter, it is such a
simple matter to click on the grey card in the first photo with the
picker tool and instantly you will have correct white balance. You then
simply set your other photos to this same value. Quick, easy, and
effective both during the shoot and after the shoot.

So there is my take on white balance... I know Jeff will want to add
his thoughts.

Steve

[Jeff_Roush]

Steves take on White Balance is correct. His method is also a good
one, and is used by many photographers. White balance doesn't need to
be a mystery, but also remember that these corrections can be made in
PS. So, if this extra step when shooting is something you don't want
to do then don't.
What is important is that you are satisfied with your own results in
your images.
In PS it is easy to "save" your changes when you do them on the "raw
screen". This is what I do, much the same as Steve was saying. I
will create a "raw saved" file when in the raw screen in PS and then
use it for every image that was shot under those specific lighting
conditions.

For example: You shoot a portrait outside. Due to the atmospheric
conditions that day you notice that your portrait is very "cool" or
"blue" In the "raw adjustment screen" make the correct adjustments and
then save this "file". You can now use it on ALL of those portraits
as you go through and process the raw images. It's an easy fix that
only takes a small amount of time.

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