Creating White Balance from direct measurement.

[jamesev]

When creating White Balance from direct measurement using the camera configurator and a white piece of paper in the light conditions you want to measure, is it a requirement to use the lens you will be shooting with on the camera to make the measurement or once you have it can you swap lens.

I am assuming the custom white balance is the effect of what the camera sees and is pretty lens independent, but just wanted views?

 

[riddell]

Interesting question.

I often shoot in a controlled studio environment and don't rewhite balance between changing lenses, and whilst there isn't a WB / colour change as such, there are definitely different characteristics of the lenses. Differing amounts of contrast, better (or worse) rendition of shade.

Between quality lenses, this is only very minor, it still means I need to make tweaks to keep the colour balance perfect and consistent.

I can only imagine this is a lot worse with lower end lenses.

 

[PhilH04]

Importantly raw files are white balance agnostic so as long as you include a white balance card there is no need for a custom white balance.

Back to the original question there can be colour rendering differences between lenses, this is often more the case with different manufacturers, for example Sigma has (or did have) a warmer rendition than Canon lenses, whether any difference is going to warrant a new custom white balance if you change lenses is really down to the individual, personally in the studio I always shoot a colour checker that is used to establish the correct white balance for all the shots under the same lighting etc.

 

[jamesev]

Also on the same theme, can you use one camera to test the white balance and then dial in the same temperature on another camera and it work for both?

 

[StewartR]

Also on the same theme, can you use one camera to test the white balance and then dial in the same temperature on another camera and it work for both?

That should work if your camera measures the white balance in Kelvins. As with lenses, there might be small variations from one camera to another, or more particularly from one brand of camera to another, but probably not enough to worry about.