R5 AWB "Blues"

[MikeD67]

Is it just me, or do others find the AWB setting on the R5 to be off? I have shot professionally with just about every EOS digital body they've come out with. Aside from their very unpredictable on camera flash results, I thought they all did their jobs well. I have an R5, been shooting with it for a few weeks, and my main complaint is that the auto white balance setting is not up to their prior specs. Having never had the luxury of shooting RAW, I relied on that setting nearly 100% of the time in the past, but this one is very un-Canon in my opinion. I would think that it could be as simple as a firmware bump to get it where it would be trustworthy. I realize that hitting a white sample in post isn't that much of a big deal, but if you need to "fix" a couple of hundred files, that one little step takes a lot of time. Anyone else finding this, or has RAW taken over the modern digital workflow??
Otherwise, a great camera, so far.
Thanks for reading

 

[bhf3737]

I have got R and R5 side-by-side, and shootingwith them for the past couple of days. For the AWB, same scene and same lens, I have noticed that R pictures are always brighter than R5 and R5 tones are warmer than R. This is more visible in video though. Need more tests, though.

 

[MikeD67]

Have you noticed any problems when using a flash for fill indoors? In the past, auto could handle this, if, say, for newsprint. It's there that I'm seeing a real need to reset a white point. Again, not a huge deal, but I always look forward to improvements on new models, this seems like a setback. Don't get me wrong, this thing is a great tool, just might have a non-traditional (for Canon) learning curve.

 

[privatebydesign]

I noticed a big difference on AWB and AWBW. AWB deliberately introduces some ambient temperature and is most obvious when used for interior fill, AWBW is much more neutral and tries to override any ambient tonality.

 

[privatebydesign]

As for fixing hundreds of pictures in post, it takes the same amount of time as fixing one and then syncing, a couple of seconds.

 

[MikeD67]

As for fixing hundreds of pictures in post, it takes the same amount of time as fixing one and then syncing, a couple of seconds.

Thanks for the reply! as far as "fixing" them goes, I was never a fan of batch processing, I always thought there was just enough difference in the files to warrant a quick run thru for each. That's probably a holdover from the early days of digital. Those noisy old 2mp files needed everything, white and black points, removing noise in the individual color channels, the list seemed endless, but we managed to get them print ready. I'm sure someone will be making a comparison like that, 20 years from now

 

[privatebydesign]

Thanks for the reply! as far as "fixing" them goes, I was never a fan of batch processing, I always thought there was just enough difference in the files to warrant a quick run thru for each. That's probably a holdover from the early days of digital. Those noisy old 2mp files needed everything, white and black points, removing noise in the individual color channels, the list seemed endless, but we managed to get them print ready. I'm sure someone will be making a comparison like that, 20 years from now

I really like the customization available in Lightroom, you can apply develop presets on import that are not only camera model specific but you can drill down to model serial number and iso. It takes a little more time to perfect your presets but once that is done over 90% of your work is applied automatically on import, which really helps for those high volume shoots. I then scan through files that are almost finished for rating then cropping, then lastly the picks get any final edits dust removal etc.

I can import, process, rate and cull, then do final adjustments on literally thousands of images a day if needing to.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

It is always possible that a individual camera needs adjusting. You can contact Canon to see what they say.

I always need to adjust white balance, no matter what the camera for indoor and flash shots. AWB is good in outdoor sunlight but I like it warmer than what I get with flash. I think a lot of it is personal preference and calibration of the monitor.