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EOS Bodies - For Stills / Re: What is white balance and what's the correct way to use it?
« on: October 25, 2012, 04:45:12 AM »
Setting a "correct" WB for a picture is challenging, as Neuro has written - it's subjective.
If you will set your WB in the current scene according to the grey card before the shot you will most likely have the correct WB if light will not change between calibration and final shooting.
If you shoot RAW and have a grey card in the scene at your target, and in PP you will pick WB from the card, then in most cases it will be most accurate, neutral and objective WB. But it happens, that you have in your scene parts which are more and less lit. If you would have two grey cards in your scene - one in the shadow and one in the light then it may happen, that those WBs would differ. Sometimes instead of the grey card you can choose white object as a source of WB but it can be more misleading. It complicates even more when you have light sources of different temperature on your photo. Your brain will in most cases still properly interprete colours in the real life scene but on the photo you can get complete strange effects. This is something I'm talking about: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=2470.0 I was challenging a few months ago looking for some methods I wouldn't know before.
It happens that when I am now trying to set the correct WB for photos taken ie outside in the early afternoon, so the photo would look like when I remember it, then it begins to be too strange sometimes (ie too warm as there are yellow and red leaves) so I have to be make reasonable adjustments in PP not to change it the wrong direction. I would like green to look green (and not much blue) and warm to look warm, but when you have a scene lit with sunlight reflected from colorful leaves, then it is still challenging for me. In such cases I think that even a grey card will give you different WBs depending where you would put your grey card in the scene.
If you will set your WB in the current scene according to the grey card before the shot you will most likely have the correct WB if light will not change between calibration and final shooting.
If you shoot RAW and have a grey card in the scene at your target, and in PP you will pick WB from the card, then in most cases it will be most accurate, neutral and objective WB. But it happens, that you have in your scene parts which are more and less lit. If you would have two grey cards in your scene - one in the shadow and one in the light then it may happen, that those WBs would differ. Sometimes instead of the grey card you can choose white object as a source of WB but it can be more misleading. It complicates even more when you have light sources of different temperature on your photo. Your brain will in most cases still properly interprete colours in the real life scene but on the photo you can get complete strange effects. This is something I'm talking about: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=2470.0 I was challenging a few months ago looking for some methods I wouldn't know before.
It happens that when I am now trying to set the correct WB for photos taken ie outside in the early afternoon, so the photo would look like when I remember it, then it begins to be too strange sometimes (ie too warm as there are yellow and red leaves) so I have to be make reasonable adjustments in PP not to change it the wrong direction. I would like green to look green (and not much blue) and warm to look warm, but when you have a scene lit with sunlight reflected from colorful leaves, then it is still challenging for me. In such cases I think that even a grey card will give you different WBs depending where you would put your grey card in the scene.
