White Balance

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Interesting video, but I do not agree that our eyes see at daylight white balance. Our brains adjust the colour of what we see to match our expectations. .

Except our brains do not really adjust the actual color, the simply adapt our brain to give us a perceived color balance at that moment, in that light, but not for all times and light conditions.

You need the color right (without brain adjustments) if you're going to print or publish images that other people will see in various medias and lighting.

The same applies to the classroom tests that DRwyoming mentioned: all well and good to experiment and see how the brain adjusts, but that really does nothing for reproducing the colors you need, which can sometimes be critical for product photography, but also important simply for proper skin tone. And why not have nature nailed down properly too?

All of this is of course just a base point for accuracy and subject to warm/cool adjustments to taste, including the color-checker cards with a range of whites for such a thing, which is entirely valid since you're custom white balancing using the actual light source.

To the OPs question: a camera that produces JPGs should always have a WB adjustment, but as everyone else is pointing out, it's not generally necessary for RAW shooting, especially the preset (when you're not doing a custom white balance).

Chris

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

A very interesting topic - I dont believe there is a "right" and a "wrong" in general terms

Here is an alternative view. I enjoyed watching it

I just finished this and it's really an excellent thought piece.

But he doesn't touch on TINT. Someone else in this thread pointed out that the white points for all color channel curves are effected by both TEMP and TINT.

Obviously, the TEMP is going to be the main handle for warm to cold adjustments, but would be nice to hear / read some in-depth considerations for (non-auto) adjustment of TINT.

Does anyone have any pointers to material or opinions on that subject?

Chris

PS: another thing that comes to mind: The "daylight" preset in WB is just a general / medium setting. The actual temp (in respect to making that white paper look white in your resulting image) changes throughout the day. It would be interesting to see the results (say, a graph of required temp adjustments in post) of someone measuring the temperature settings throughout a day (cloudless), say, shooting a white piece of paper on a flat table, from dawn to dusk.

 

[Anthony]

Except our brains do not really adjust the actual color, the simply adapt our brain to give us a perceived color balance at that moment, in that light, but not for all times and light conditions.

You need the color right (without brain adjustments) if you're going to print or publish images that other people will see in various medias and lighting.

That was my point. Our brains adapt to the changing temperature of light, and that reduces the value of our eyes as a white balance tool for photography.

 

[EJARAN]

A very interesting topic - I dont believe there is a "right" and a "wrong" in general terms

Here is an alternative view. I enjoyed watching it

Intriguing view of white balance, absolutely makes sense. It has convinced me to try 5500k. We’ll see how it works for bird photography - Thanks!

 

[Flyboy]

That film was white balanced. You could buy daylight or tungsten, and there were filters to correct if you had the wrong film for the light.

Yes, and most of us kept a K-2 filter on our cameras for Black and White film, or a Skylight 1A for color.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

Why would you adjust White Balance in Camera when it's so easy to do in post. (This query came to me as I was looking to assign a button to Area and saw the WB on my Z8 Mode dial)

If you shoot RAW, then you'll have all the same WB options post process as you have in camera, which JPG won't give you.
If you're shooting volume (e.g. sports in JPG), then my advice is always get the WB and exposure correct in camera. Use a light meter.
For stadiums at night, I used to use an Expodisc to very easily set a custom WB, but I've found the auto WB on the Z9 is very accurate and don't need the Expodisc much any more.

 

[Palouse]

If you shoot RAW, then you'll have all the same WB options post process as you have in camera, which JPG won't give you.

Yah, sure. Been said so many times. It is NOT the point here.
The closer your in-camera capture is to reality the easier it will be to assure yourself of great color.

 

[bleirer]

It's a good question about tint. If you hover over a neutral object in Lightroom (in default RGB mode) you should see equal values for red and green and blue. A whiter object will have higher numbers for each and a greyer object will have lower, but the r and g and b will be pretty equal to each other, as in gray at 128, 128, 128. If an object that should be neutral white or any shade of gray has a color cast because it is illuminated by a (more red) warm or (more blue) cool light source, then the rgb numbers will not match each other and would be adjusted if you want the object to be neutral. Moving the temperature slider leaves the green alone but fiddles with red and blue, so something that looks too yellow/orangish or too blue use the temperature slider. Moving the tint slider adjusts the green against red and blue. So tint is more a refinement of the main work done by the temperature slider, if moving temperature slider introduces a green or magenta cast that would be corrected with the tint slider.

To repeat how the sliders work, moving the temp slider to the left lowers the red channel white point at the same time it raises the blue channel white point, so it balances red against blue or warm against cool. Moving the temp slider right raises the red channel white point while lowering the blue channel white point. Moving the tint slider to the left lowers the combined red and blue white points but raises the green white point. Moving the tint right raises the combined red and blue but lowers the green white point.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

It's a good question about tint. If you hover over a neutral object in Lightroom (in default RGB mode) you should see equal values for red and green and blue. A whiter object will have higher numbers for each and a greyer object will have lower, but the r and g and b will be pretty equal to each other, as in gray at 128, 128, 128. If an object that should be neutral white or any shade of gray has a color cast because it is illuminated by a (more red) warm or (more blue) cool light source, then the rgb numbers will not match each other and would be adjusted if you want the object to be neutral. Moving the temperature slider leaves the green alone but fiddles with red and blue, so something that looks too yellow/orangish or too blue use the temperature slider. Moving the tint slider adjusts the green against red and blue. So tint is more a refinement of the main work done by the temperature slider, if moving temperature slider introduces a green or magenta cast that would be corrected with the tint slider.

To repeat how the sliders work, moving the temp slider to the left lowers the red channel white point at the same time it raises the blue channel white point, so it balances red against blue or warm against cool. Moving the temp slider right raises the red channel white point while lowering the blue channel white point. Moving the tint slider to the left lowers the combined red and blue white points but raises the green white point. Moving the tint right raises the combined red and blue but lowers the green white point.

Thanks Bill, that makes great sense.

Chris