What is white balance and what's the correct way to use it?
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There is also the almost separate discussion about art. Let's face it, it's FUN to create amazing images using flash gels, various filters, etc. And it's sometimes necessary to use those same tools to correct WB in tricky lighting situations. Joe McNally refers to many times he has used filter/gel combos to correct for weird lighting at the shoot. An example might be a magenta filter and green gel for mixed flourescent lighting with flash, etc.
The better photographer can determine what is impossible in post and what can be corrected with no worries. Personally, most of the time when I'm on the go I concentrate on framing/composition, focus and things I can't fix in post. I can usually deal with WB in post. If I spend too much time worrying about WB, I will miss the shot being distracted changing settings, etc. OTOH, if I am shooting portraits and spending 30 minutes on lighting anyway, I might as well spend another 30 seconds and get the WB right too.
The better photographer can determine what is impossible in post and what can be corrected with no worries. Personally, most of the time when I'm on the go I concentrate on framing/composition, focus and things I can't fix in post. I can usually deal with WB in post. If I spend too much time worrying about WB, I will miss the shot being distracted changing settings, etc. OTOH, if I am shooting portraits and spending 30 minutes on lighting anyway, I might as well spend another 30 seconds and get the WB right too.
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RLPhoto
Gear doesn't matter, Just a Matter of Convenience.
neuroanatomist said:dirtcastle said:
Agreed. Plus...I'm lazy! Why should I get up at 4am to catch that lovely pink sunrise lighting, when I can sleep in and just adjust temp and tint?!? :
Well, to a point I suppose. If you have mixed lighting like this, correcting for the wrong WB can yield more pleasing results or a completely different shot.
IE: The "Correct" WB is the one on the Left.
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paul13walnut5
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hjulenissen said:
Hahaha!
What if the viewer is colour blind?
What if we are all slightly colour blind?
Did you not read the rest of my answer, or just choose to ignore the bits where I went onto say grade it etc in post?
White balance and colour temperature are technical concepts that exist and are provable and repeatable.
Subjective perception, not as much.
Happy new year, make it your resolution to get it right at the capture stage and play about with it later. Much easier than deliberately getting it wrong in camera and trying to fix it later.
"Color science is pretty much meaningless...". Good one, that!
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I carry around a Kodak color card I got way back in the film days..... top half neutral grey, bottom half color bars.
For things like sunlight or clouds I use the camera presets, they are usually close enough that an image can be easily adjusted to taste in lightroom. When I get confused with indoor lighting, I make a best guess at the settings, whip out the color card and take a shot of it, and then procede. When I get back I can use the color card shot to tell me what I need to adjust.
And shoot in raw.... you can change the color balance afterwards with raw files.... I have merrily snapped away dozens of photos before realizing that I had the balance set to tungsten BEFORE I moved outdoors and forgot to change it.... With RAW files you can correct that mistake.
Using the color card I was able to adjust white balance and hue until Fluffy turned white again....
For things like sunlight or clouds I use the camera presets, they are usually close enough that an image can be easily adjusted to taste in lightroom. When I get confused with indoor lighting, I make a best guess at the settings, whip out the color card and take a shot of it, and then procede. When I get back I can use the color card shot to tell me what I need to adjust.
And shoot in raw.... you can change the color balance afterwards with raw files.... I have merrily snapped away dozens of photos before realizing that I had the balance set to tungsten BEFORE I moved outdoors and forgot to change it.... With RAW files you can correct that mistake.
Using the color card I was able to adjust white balance and hue until Fluffy turned white again....
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Excellent notes everyone.
Lets not forget - we also need to calibrate our monitors and at times compensate for the final presentation. Be it a gallery, or a cinema (especially if were goibg to a film recorder and need to pass through lin-log/xyz conversions applying various luts depending on neg/pos stock.) Much like getting the right icc matching the printer and paper.
Lets not forget - we also need to calibrate our monitors and at times compensate for the final presentation. Be it a gallery, or a cinema (especially if were goibg to a film recorder and need to pass through lin-log/xyz conversions applying various luts depending on neg/pos stock.) Much like getting the right icc matching the printer and paper.
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paul13walnut5
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It's a good point.
I generally have to scream in stage crews faces to get them to change the projector colour temp to match the room lighting.
Another good point is that I've just bought a calumet / prospec zipbalance.
Which is a bit more robust than my qpcard. Bigger too. And cheaper.
I generally have to scream in stage crews faces to get them to change the projector colour temp to match the room lighting.
Another good point is that I've just bought a calumet / prospec zipbalance.
Which is a bit more robust than my qpcard. Bigger too. And cheaper.
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Don Haines said:
Judging by the look on that cat's face you've either had it pose waaaaay too long, or asked it to pose for this sort of thing waaaaay too often ! ;D
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paul13walnut5
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hjulenissen said:
It's subjective for humans, imperical for cameras.
Absolutely in it for the photography, and for me, the videography. I understand fully that the technically correct white balance might not be the desired result, but lets walk before we run here, the OP asked about understanding white balance.
Once you get to a certain level of competence with anything you can start to play about, break the rules with confidence and get an intended effect, but the rules, the science are where you start.
I prefer to get it all right in camera. I'm coming from a video perspective I suppose, where I have 25 frames every second for up to 12 mins to fix. Easier to get it as right as possible in camera.
And I've found this approach helps my photography. In video I will spend time filtering different CT sources, running manual WB, recording a test strip with colour and gamma charts, I wouldn't expect most folk to do this with their stills, and I certainly don't.
The OP asked about white balance, answers like 'it's subjective' don't really tell them anything. Get the fundamentals in place and then start playing. I use Apple Color, I have Magic Bullet and Looks plug ins for FCP, Premiere and After-Effects, so I fully acknowledge the benefits of grading,and the impact this can have on the footage for the viewer, and so it follows for stills, but my starting point is always getting it neutral in camera, then I can do anything I like with it.
The grading might be subjective, but the science of colour temperature is anything but. Understanding that different light sources look different to an objective piece of apparatus like a camera is the first step to achieving the results you want, be these graded within in inch of their lives or otherwise.
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use the white balance dropper in lightroom... even the white of an eye if there isn't anything else..
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Mikael Risedal said:
HOLY C**P!!!!! I posted the before picture!!!! Thanks!..... and this really proves the value of a color card.
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LOL! You made my morning. Now I can drag myself to the office and face the dayRickSpringfield said:Dear Original Poster,
If this is your first experience with White Balance ... stop looking at this post and immediately run into the other room where your significant other is sitting and give them a big hug. Then swiftly seize your camera and using whatever settings are full auto (green box) take a bunch of pictures. Burst, Timed, Horizontal, Vertical, anything. Then download them onto your computer and look at them together and talk about the great expressions, and the fun you had taking the pictures, and then go get an ice cream. When your done, come back home and snuggle and then right before bed, when you are sitting up reading a book... reach over, grab your camera, and snap another few pictures under the soft white light of the lamp on the nightstand. Maybe even splurge with a couple of hilarious self portraits together. Then go to bed and dream about how you'll look at these great pictures tomorrow.
This is immensely important. If you don't do this, you'll be missing out on your last chance to take a picture and ... deep breath everyone ... not be critical of it. The fact is, white balance is an enormous rat hole. Once you start down this path you won't ever go back to that happy place where a sorta exposed, lamp lit, color suppresed, low contrast image will do. Oh no my friend, from now on its not about taking pictures ... its about taking pictures with grey cards and modifiers and obsessing about Kelvins. In fact, you wont even be able to walk into someones house without thinking 'You really should have used color balanced 5500k bulbs in those lamps with white shades'. And for awhile folks will think ... maybe he's got something there. But then after hanging out with you and your custom white balanced buddy's for a night, the rest of your friends will start to think ... 'Man, if I'm not wearing a shirt with a red ring on it or holding a grey card this guy doesn't even notice me'. And they couldn't be farther from the truth because you and I both know you for sure noticed them. In fact, you noticed they were lit with a 2700k soft white bulb from home depot and its not doing much for their skin tones.
Brilliant! Do you have a blog?
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paul13walnut5
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Thats me that is.
I am the precious cameraman who complains that the light is all wrong.
And yes, in mixed environments I am secretly thinking what lee numbers I'd use to colour correct.
Even socially. In the bar. Waiting at the supermarket till. Driving through a tunnel.
It's tragically tragically sad.
I don't take my photography quite so seriously as my video, but hey, the OP asked about WB.
Maybe I should have just towed the 'it's subjective' line.
I am the precious cameraman who complains that the light is all wrong.
And yes, in mixed environments I am secretly thinking what lee numbers I'd use to colour correct.
Even socially. In the bar. Waiting at the supermarket till. Driving through a tunnel.
It's tragically tragically sad.
I don't take my photography quite so seriously as my video, but hey, the OP asked about WB.
Maybe I should have just towed the 'it's subjective' line.
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RickSpringfield said:Dear Original Poster,
If this is your first experience with White Balance ... stop looking at this post and immediately run into the other room where your significant other is sitting and give them a big hug. Then swiftly seize your camera and using whatever settings are full auto (green box) take a bunch of pictures. Burst, Timed, Horizontal, Vertical, anything. Then download them onto your computer and look at them together and talk about the great expressions, and the fun you had taking the pictures, and then go get an ice cream. When your done, come back home and snuggle and then right before bed, when you are sitting up reading a book... reach over, grab your camera, and snap another few pictures under the soft white light of the lamp on the nightstand. Maybe even splurge with a couple of hilarious self portraits together. Then go to bed and dream about how you'll look at these great pictures tomorrow.
This is immensely important. If you don't do this, you'll be missing out on your last chance to take a picture and ... deep breath everyone ... not be critical of it. The fact is, white balance is an enormous rat hole. Once you start down this path you won't ever go back to that happy place where a sorta exposed, lamp lit, color suppresed, low contrast image will do. Oh no my friend, from now on its not about taking pictures ... its about taking pictures with grey cards and modifiers and obsessing about Kelvins. In fact, you wont even be able to walk into someones house without thinking 'You really should have used color balanced 5500k bulbs in those lamps with white shades'. And for awhile folks will think ... maybe he's got something there. But then after hanging out with you and your custom white balanced buddy's for a night, the rest of your friends will start to think ... 'Man, if I'm not wearing a shirt with a red ring on it or holding a grey card this guy doesn't even notice me'. And they couldn't be farther from the truth because you and I both know you for sure noticed them. In fact, you noticed they were lit with a 2700k soft white bulb from home depot and its not doing much for their skin tones.
LOL... Book worthy! ;D
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RickSpringfield said:Dear Original Poster,
If this is your first experience with White Balance ... stop looking at this post and immediately run into the other room where your significant other is sitting and give them a big hug. Then swiftly seize your camera and using whatever settings are full auto (green box) take a bunch of pictures. Burst, Timed, Horizontal, Vertical, anything. Then download them onto your computer and look at them together and talk about the great expressions, and the fun you had taking the pictures, and then go get an ice cream. When your done, come back home and snuggle and then right before bed, when you are sitting up reading a book... reach over, grab your camera, and snap another few pictures under the soft white light of the lamp on the nightstand. Maybe even splurge with a couple of hilarious self portraits together. Then go to bed and dream about how you'll look at these great pictures tomorrow.
This is immensely important. If you don't do this, you'll be missing out on your last chance to take a picture and ... deep breath everyone ... not be critical of it. The fact is, white balance is an enormous rat hole. Once you start down this path you won't ever go back to that happy place where a sorta exposed, lamp lit, color suppresed, low contrast image will do. Oh no my friend, from now on its not about taking pictures ... its about taking pictures with grey cards and modifiers and obsessing about Kelvins. In fact, you wont even be able to walk into someones house without thinking 'You really should have used color balanced 5500k bulbs in those lamps with white shades'. And for awhile folks will think ... maybe he's got something there. But then after hanging out with you and your custom white balanced buddy's for a night, the rest of your friends will start to think ... 'Man, if I'm not wearing a shirt with a red ring on it or holding a grey card this guy doesn't even notice me'. And they couldn't be farther from the truth because you and I both know you for sure noticed them. In fact, you noticed they were lit with a 2700k soft white bulb from home depot and its not doing much for their skin tones.
LOL! Well written and funny
However, and I make no claim to be good at this. There are people here who have serious game in this (I have used a recycled napkin in a pinch). I got the great advice in here to buy the ColorChecker Passport by X rite, and I have to say that it is brilliant. I normally shoot with AWB (always only in RAW) for private use. However, right now I am shooting quite a few people (portraits) for a commercial campaign, and I have found that using the Colorchecker which works so well and integrated with Lightroom is saving the day and night of not having to salvage the pictures in post. All ad agencies have all adobe products, and so I shoot my pictures with the colorchecker, and I leave it to the artdirectors and designers to get it right
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I love the way you guys make the OP's decisions for him. Paul actually got it right. The OP specifically asked about WB and how to use it properly, and now you are making a decision for him that it doesn't matter to him and it's not important because it's subjective. Oh how I wish I knew as much as most of you.
Or, you could just answer the question. Perhaps you don't know and use the "it's subjective" line to cover your own lack of knowledge.
Either way, keep it up! This is good entertainment!
Or, you could just answer the question. Perhaps you don't know and use the "it's subjective" line to cover your own lack of knowledge.
Either way, keep it up! This is good entertainment!
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paul13walnut5
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hjulenissen said:
Bullocks!
Kelvin Scale was derived by a physicist from my home city, Glasgow.
The colour temperature comes from the colour of carbon when burned at a given temperature.
It's really that simple.
When you dial in a kelvin, thats what it's based on.
Your example of the candlelight is a good one. Do you use awb and try and fix it later? Do you dial in the closest preset? Now which preset is closest again? What if you wanted to lift it a little with some bounced soft flash? Say if the family were a black family for example? How do you make sure the flash output doesnt clash with the candlelight?
Heres a couple for you... A model lit by flash in an urban environment at night with some sodium streetlamps in the background?
A singer in a band under hmi stage lights? LED pars? Fresnel spot? With red green and blue gels on some of them?
You need one gadget. A white sheet of paper. If you know your kelvins, or even the appropriate preset you don't even need that.
The first two quotes from your reply indicate that you have no consideration of what the OP asked, and confirm that you really don't know what you are talking about.
It might be complex, it might need a bit of thought, it might require an alteration to how you work, but then that was the gist of the OP question. They are willing to try and learn, they've correctly sussed that its probably quite important in some situations and that an awareness of it can't hurt.
Hey, man, if awb is working for you, great, but niether the OP or anybody else asked!
PS: when you 'fix' your WB in post, as with all sliders, less is more.
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Is white balance related to metering?
For example I know that my 5dIII measures the exposure at the center of the frame.
Let's say I decide to measure outside of center. I than measure with center point, lock metering, recompose and refocus.
What will the AWB be? The one from the first measure or it will be recalculated after I recomposed?
For example I know that my 5dIII measures the exposure at the center of the frame.
Let's say I decide to measure outside of center. I than measure with center point, lock metering, recompose and refocus.
What will the AWB be? The one from the first measure or it will be recalculated after I recomposed?
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paul13walnut5
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In camera metering is generally about the luminance (brightness) of light, more usually that reflected from the subject, white balance is more about the colour of the source light.
Both systems cans be easily confused, metering by light or dark subjects, by lights behind the subject etc, white balance can be confused by the colour of the subject.
Despite the 'it's subjective' crew this is why I think its impoetant to understand how the camera is working, and where it can get things wrong, as this helps you get things right.
Both systems cans be easily confused, metering by light or dark subjects, by lights behind the subject etc, white balance can be confused by the colour of the subject.
Despite the 'it's subjective' crew this is why I think its impoetant to understand how the camera is working, and where it can get things wrong, as this helps you get things right.
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There's no way to actually understand white balance without also understanding linear raw, which also gets into exposure and profiling and dynamic range (of both the scene and the camera) and lots more.
In uniform illumination, it's possible to get truly perfect exposure and white balance (and near-perfect color reproduction and contrast and all the rest) by knowing what to do with a quality profiling chart and all sorts of arcane software. In less tightly controlled situations, you can use similar techniques with a ColorChecker to get as close as the actual lighting in the scene permits.
If you're truly insane, Elle Stone outlines a procedure here:
http://www.freelists.org/post/argyllcms/Profile-input-white-not-mapping-to-output-white,68
that does that. I have a follow-up post in that thread with refinements and simplifications...but, alas, only the images and not my actual text made it to the archives. But Elle's process works, is logically equivalent to what I do, and the inspiration for what I do.
If, for whatever reason, shooting a color chart isn't an option, I have two suggestions, both of which work better than anything else I've seen discussed in this thread. (Both assume you're shooting RAW and setting white balance in post-processing.)
First, forget all the expensive white balance targets. None of them is as good as a styrofoam coffee cup.
Styrofoam is the right level of reflectance to get a noise-free sample without clipping, and it's spectrally flat. Indeed, with only two notable exceptions, nothing is better than styrofoam as a white balance target.
The first exception is Tyvek, which is 98% - 99% reflective and even more spectrally flat than styrofoam (which is 80% reflective or so). Your local office supply store sells Tyvek envelopes. Tyvek tends to be on the glossy side and prone to glare...which is good for knowing if you've got glare in the scene, but not so good for setting white balance. The other exception is Spectralon, which is ludicrously-refined PTFE (Teflon) with a glare-free surface. Expect to pay as much for a Spectralon target as for an L lens.
But back to the coffee cup. You can put it in your scene and get an even sampling of the illumination from every direction; you can then eyedropper from any part of the cup to get a white balance from light in that direction. Or, you can put it over your lens and get an average of all the color in the space where you're shooting, perfect for an in-camera custom white balance.
There are, of course, times when it isn't even practical to put a coffee cup in the scene. In such cases, it's still easy to get an excellent white balance. All you have to do is crank the saturation to maximum, fiddle with the white balance knobs until the colors in the scene look the least weird you can make them, and then return the saturation back to wherever you want it.
So, there're my two recommendations for white balance for the not-insane.
I'd also especially recommend avoiding using anything other than styrofoam (or Tyvek or Spectralon) for white balance, and especially avoiding "white" paper. With the exception of a small number of expensive fine art papers, paper is actually light yellow and has fluorescent blue dyes added to trick the eyes into thinking that the paper is whiter than white. It's a similar story with white clothing, with the added bonus that you usually get a non-trivial amount of skin showing through the fabric. Very few walls painted white are actually free of colorants, even though the base paints are generally themselves pretty good potential targets. Even those walls painted with truly white paint...well, it doesn't take long for them to take on colors from the environment.
I could go on, but this is already more information than is healthy....
Cheers,
b&
In uniform illumination, it's possible to get truly perfect exposure and white balance (and near-perfect color reproduction and contrast and all the rest) by knowing what to do with a quality profiling chart and all sorts of arcane software. In less tightly controlled situations, you can use similar techniques with a ColorChecker to get as close as the actual lighting in the scene permits.
If you're truly insane, Elle Stone outlines a procedure here:
http://www.freelists.org/post/argyllcms/Profile-input-white-not-mapping-to-output-white,68
that does that. I have a follow-up post in that thread with refinements and simplifications...but, alas, only the images and not my actual text made it to the archives. But Elle's process works, is logically equivalent to what I do, and the inspiration for what I do.
If, for whatever reason, shooting a color chart isn't an option, I have two suggestions, both of which work better than anything else I've seen discussed in this thread. (Both assume you're shooting RAW and setting white balance in post-processing.)
First, forget all the expensive white balance targets. None of them is as good as a styrofoam coffee cup.
Styrofoam is the right level of reflectance to get a noise-free sample without clipping, and it's spectrally flat. Indeed, with only two notable exceptions, nothing is better than styrofoam as a white balance target.
The first exception is Tyvek, which is 98% - 99% reflective and even more spectrally flat than styrofoam (which is 80% reflective or so). Your local office supply store sells Tyvek envelopes. Tyvek tends to be on the glossy side and prone to glare...which is good for knowing if you've got glare in the scene, but not so good for setting white balance. The other exception is Spectralon, which is ludicrously-refined PTFE (Teflon) with a glare-free surface. Expect to pay as much for a Spectralon target as for an L lens.
But back to the coffee cup. You can put it in your scene and get an even sampling of the illumination from every direction; you can then eyedropper from any part of the cup to get a white balance from light in that direction. Or, you can put it over your lens and get an average of all the color in the space where you're shooting, perfect for an in-camera custom white balance.
There are, of course, times when it isn't even practical to put a coffee cup in the scene. In such cases, it's still easy to get an excellent white balance. All you have to do is crank the saturation to maximum, fiddle with the white balance knobs until the colors in the scene look the least weird you can make them, and then return the saturation back to wherever you want it.
So, there're my two recommendations for white balance for the not-insane.
I'd also especially recommend avoiding using anything other than styrofoam (or Tyvek or Spectralon) for white balance, and especially avoiding "white" paper. With the exception of a small number of expensive fine art papers, paper is actually light yellow and has fluorescent blue dyes added to trick the eyes into thinking that the paper is whiter than white. It's a similar story with white clothing, with the added bonus that you usually get a non-trivial amount of skin showing through the fabric. Very few walls painted white are actually free of colorants, even though the base paints are generally themselves pretty good potential targets. Even those walls painted with truly white paint...well, it doesn't take long for them to take on colors from the environment.
I could go on, but this is already more information than is healthy....
Cheers,
b&
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