Getting the Whites Right HELP

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Hi , hoping for a good deal of friendly understandable advice here .

What is the best way to get the white balance right in our photos ? I do calibrate my monitor with a Spyder pro . I shoot on Canons , and use Canons own DPP to convert my raws to jpegs . I have struggled with the white balance , more so if I am honest with the likes of Deer and Hares who sit in the middle of green fields . I don`t like my images to look overly warm or yellow , and so I think I tend to tone this down to far and make them look cold or weird as some have suggested . As most images will differ greatly light wise , is there a sure fire way to get that white balance right ?

Over to you . ;)
 
Thanks but that not going to help with images already taken is it ?
How would a grey card be of use , in a photo of an animal sitting in the middle of a field taken at 600 mm ?
 
I haven't used DPP for several years but a few software packages have an eyedropper tool in the White Balance section.
By clicking on a part of the image that should be white corrects the colour.
You may have to click on a few parts of the image to get the colour you desire.
 
I haven't used DPP for several years but a few software packages have an eyedropper tool in the White Balance section.
By clicking on a part of the image that should be white corrects the colour.
You may have to click on a few parts of the image to get the colour you desire.

Thanks Mike , been doing that , and personally was quite pleased , but when 3 0dd people tell you the white balance is off , you have to question it / yourself . What's looking good to me is obviously the most important , but if that many doubt it , it has you wondering . I am struggling to see what I am not doing quite right .
 
Do you set the white balance in your camera before taking images ?
 
Hi there.


I am no expert but do use Canon Dpp for my raws I use an old version 3.13 I do have the newer version but prefer the simpler style of the old.


My camera Is a Canon 6d I take photos in raw only on a cloudy white balance most of the time and tweak after in Canon via the temp slider. I use the faithful picture style.


I too find that my camera makes grass to saturated for my liking making it looks un real. I have no formula I usually adjust saturation a bit in Dpp maybe adjust the colour curves channels a touch.


Then further play around in Pshop cs6. Usually adjusting the hue sat adjustment layer. Most times altering the yellows helps most use the lightness slider in there too. Still I will use the curves too if needed.


Sorry if it sounds confusing but I don't have a definitive way of getting the grass how I like it. So may do it differently each time.


Even then who's to say it looks right. I'm not a fan of over saturation so maybe my photos would be dull to some.


Funnily enough I put a greyhound photo up the other week and someone edited it as they would prefer it to look. Which was fine my me I asked for crit.


The difference was chalk and cheese to how I like my photos.


Gaz
 
If you are taking photos during daylight and the sun is out, setting your camera at a colour temp of 5600K is a good place to start and will show you what the subject actually looks like. The problem you have is that as you get closer to the ground the subject will be lit more and more by the reflected light from the thing it's sat on. If you imagine a white ball placed outside on a piece of red material the top half of the ball would be lit with daylight and look white to your eye and the bottom half of the ball would look red as it's lit by the reflected light and it would get more red as it got closer to the material.

If you want to show the ball as it is in reality your image needs to show that it is red on the bottom and white at the top. The problem is that your eye is able to cancel out a lot of these variations in colour so with a natural looking image you might want to reduce the influence of the red to make it look how you you think you see it.

With the hare it is obviously lit with a lot of reflected green/yellow light from the grass so if you remove that the image will look a bit blue and I think the image of the hare looks too blue for this reason, it also looks about 3/4 of a stop over exposed to me.

I would suggest you start of using 5600k and then adjust the images from there. Getting white balance right in these situations is always a compromise.
 
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Who’s telling you the white balance is off? you need a reference point in the image.
I have buddy.
Mark is a friend of mine ,we both shoot similar subjects I am weak at post processing have simialr struggles to Mark so encouraged him to ask elsewhere for help .:)

cheers for helping him along

stu
 
@ah5168

Thats a good informative reply made me think what is actualy going on when shooting from ground level.

Gaz
 
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I think that hare image needs to be a bit darker and a bit warmer plus a touch of magenta tint.

White Balance isn't just warm and cold. Where there's a lot of green in the scene, trees, grass like here, woodland, a carpet of garlic (growing under a green tree canopy!!) etc it needs to be dialed out.
 
Lots of useful comments and info here Thank you , again a few different opinions , I think it`s definitely the Green crops and Grass that are causing me the biggest headache , if you look at My " The Hare Stare " post here :

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/the-hare-stare.711062/

that prompted me to start this thread , you will also see how different the edits , particularly on the grass look . I don`t think any are perfect , none disastrous , but all definitely different . Maybe there is no perfect answer or right or wrong . o_O
 
Maybe there is no perfect answer or right or wrong . o_O

Pretty much nail on t'head here

When I first started on Weddings I was paranoid about WB, and bought the Expodisc to get it 'right', but 'right' usually made everything look a bit cold. Then Expodisc brought out a 'warmer' version and I thought WTF !!! So 'right' really is in the eye of the beholder much of the time

Of course with a subject you can't walk up to using a grey card, or similar, just isn't possible. You can hold it up for a comparative measurement of the light falling on both you & the subject, but not for how the grass near it is changing the colour of the subject where it reflects onto it. You could try taking a grey card reading 1ft off the floor if you were on the same type of grassy field, but if you're not in the same light and same reflective surface then you can't get a 'correct' comparison

If I was shooting a Hare for example, and thought I'd got something decent in the bag, I'd then use a grey card as quickly as possible in the same light and same grassy area if possible, or the nearest I could to it - then back on the computer I'd probably still warm that up a bit as that's my preference :)

Dave
 
I am lazy and set my camera to AWB most of the time. However, I do have my camera calibrated so LR uses the correct conversion profile. If I really want accuracy I take a shot of my color checker passport (a grey card would do) in the same light and use that to set the WP in LR. Having established the right WB, I then synchronise all the other shots I took at the same time. Grass being too saturated is a common issue. In such cases I suggest you reduce the yellow saturation in the Raw editor as it is the high yellow content which causes the problem. The only time I do not use AWB is in a studio when I then use the flash setting, I will also capture a shot of the colour checker again to get real accuracy. Fashion shots probably require the greatest accuracy.

Dave
 
If you set to "Cloudy" white balance all the time then it's not surprising the results are variable.

I tend to use "Auto" WB and I've never had any major problems and rarely adjust it in PP..
If you're shooting raw you can tweak the WB to whatever you want, but I find "Auto" gives a good starting point.
 
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