white balance card - help needed for wedding!

I use a disk "similar" to a expo disk
Ebay, couple of quid

It is on a cord, tied to the camera strap

1. you cant loose it
2. it is just where you need it
3. you can WB without balancing a bit of card on a chair, ledge whatever
 
if you are shooting exclusivley indoors, it will be well worth using a filter on your flash to match your flash colour to the lighting
 
I personally think you should reconsider doing a wedding if your unsure about white balance. However, shoot RAW and you can worry about it in post production.
 
aligibbs said:
I personally think you should reconsider doing a wedding if your unsure about white balance. However, shoot RAW and you can worry about it in post production.
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Often wondered about this

Even shooting RAW, if your colour balance is a mile off, then you risk injecting noise or lack of contrast into the final image

It depends what your camera actually does when you alter the colur balance. If it activly adjusts the output of the RGB chanels, then we really need to get WB right - in camera
 
Richard King said:
Often wondered about this

Even shooting RAW, if your colour balance is a mile off, then you risk injecting noise or lack of contrast into the final image

It depends what your camera actually does when you alter the colur balance. If it activly adjusts the output of the RGB chanels, then we really need to get WB right - in camera
Click to expand...

You can get more noise if the colour balance is way out, as it's effectively increasing the ISO in one or more channels, but it makes no odds if that post processing element is done in camera through the on-board JPEG engine, or at the computer. Just don't under expose!

Popular wedding photographer's trick is to shoot the white table cloth at the reception for white balance. Works perfectly well. Any neutral tone will do - white or grey.
 
HoppyUK said:
You can get more noise if the colour balance is way out, as it's effectively increasing the ISO in one or more channels, but it makes no odds if that post processing element is done in camera through the on-board JPEG engine, or at the computer. Just don't under expose!
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That supports the tests I did on this a few years ago, which I why I wonder why people think you can just sort it in PP - Best sorted in camera properly
 
Richard King said:
That supports the tests I did on this a few years ago, which I why I wonder why people think you can just sort it in PP - Best sorted in camera properly
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Ah, no! My bad. It is 'effectively' increasing the ISO, hence the noise when you pump up the relevant channels - either in-camera or in post. In-camera is post processing in just the same anyway.

But the Raw file is the same, regardless of what white balance you set. So correcting in post does exactly the same thing.
 
HoppyUK said:
Ah, no! My bad. It is 'effectively' increasing the ISO, hence the noise when you pump up the relevant channels - either in-camera or in post. In-camera is post processing in just the same anyway.

But the Raw file is the same, regardless of what white balance you set. So correcting in post does exactly the same thing.
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Am I wasting my time using an expodisc, should I just do it in PP then?
 
Richard King said:
Even shooting RAW, if your colour balance is a mile off, then you risk injecting noise or lack of contrast into the final image

It depends what your camera actually does when you alter the colur balance. If it activly adjusts the output of the RGB chanels, then we really need to get WB right - in camera
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This is nonsense the RAW file is just that what the camera seen. It is the no different doing WB in camera or JPG the main thing is to expose to the right and get max info. when working in PP you will have more detail to work with.
You only inject noise if you have to lift the dark end of any colour, this is why exposing to the right you will have less possibility of adding noise.
If you let the camera do it as in a JPG then you have less control over it.
I shoot in RAW and have camera WB set to AUTO, the setting only help when doing your PP as ACR will apply the camera setting first so you can then alter if you wish to.
 
NigelPaul said:
Am I wasting my time using an expodisc, should I just do it in PP then?
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I think the Expodisc is a con - you can get similar on ebay for a fiver. Or just stick a piece of clean white paper over the lens and point it at the light - same flippin difference.

Or shoot a sheet of white paper, card, table cloth, grey card whatever - so long as it's neutral. TBH I use the pre-sets more often than a custom white balance, and find them pretty good. Colour balance isn't always about theoretical accuracy, it's about looking right, and that is not always the same thing at all. It's usually advisable to get the bride's dress right though :eek:

I like to get the colour balance right at shooting, mainly because I don't post process at all if I can avoid it and just use the out of camera JPEGs. Also, when you go to the Raw many processors will pick up on the camera pre-sets and apply them as a default, which gives you a good starting point. The Raw is untouched underneath of course, so you can still do whatever you like regardless of the white balance setting (or any other settings else for that matter). The only thing that goes on the Raw is what comes through the lens - nothing else applied.
 
As i understand it, when you shoot RAW the output of the sensor is recorded, and any settnigs you had on the camera e.g. white balance are taged in the file, and used by the raw processor as a starting point

However here is the 100$ question

If you are chimping the screen - what is displayed - the RAW file (no adjustments) or the JPEG equivelent - because I bet your bottom dollar that what most peope do next is react to what they saw on the screen

Next 100$ question If you are exposing so the RGB histogram is to the right, does it show the WB version or the RAW version

Next 100$ question Does active colour matrix metering (and similar metering modes) take into account the white balance. I wonder how much you could get exposue of say a sunset off by, if you had a really extreme white balance error
 
White table cloth would work - but that is the reception that occurs after the wedding

Grey/White card is very handy to have. You can adjust it in post however if you have a couple of hundred shots in varied lighting conditions it makes sense to get a custom white balance for each condition and reduce your time spent in post.

johnb said:
The OP has gone a little quiet
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Your point being?

(and I don't see 4 hours as quiet really)
 
Richard King said:
As i understand it, when you shoot RAW the output of the sensor is recorded, and any settnigs you had on the camera e.g. white balance are taged in the file, and used by the raw processor as a starting point

However here is the 100$ question

If you are chimping the screen - what is displayed - the RAW file (no adjustments) or the JPEG equivelent - because I bet your bottom dollar that what most peope do next is react to what they saw on the screen
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The LCD displays a JPEG (even if you have not got JPEG enabled) with all of the camera's various pre-sets applied. You can't actually see a Raw file, it's just a load of 010101s until it's been through some kind of image processor.

Next 100$ question If you are exposing so the RGB histogram is to the right, does it show the WB version or the RAW version
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It shows the JPEG, fully processed, as above.

Next 100$ question Does active colour matrix metering (and similar metering modes) take into account the white balance. I wonder how much you could get exposue of say a sunset off by, if you had a really extreme white balance error
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I don't know. It might. It certainly could. It might not. Not sure what Nikon gets up to, but I don't think Canon has anything like that even through there are all sorts of very complicated things that go on with evaluative/matrix metering with E-TTL flash for example, comparing dynamic range between flash and ambient exposures, taking distance into the equation, and even adjusting the white balance to compensate for shifts due to flash duration! :eek:

The danger is that if you've set the WB accidentally miles off, left it on tungsten and then moved outside for example, it could screw your exposure, so I suspect it would be pretty subtle. Either way, likely to be the least of your exposure worries, especially with a sunset ;)

I claim $200.

keirik said:
luckily most brides wear something approximating to white :lol:
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Approximating to white is no good for an accurate white balance.
 
:whistling:
 
Approximating to white is no good for an accurate white balance.
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actually it was joke - did you not see the smiley

but then again you are wrong

as a previous poster said - any neural tone will work and a wedding dress works perfectly well

particularly when shooting in RAW it gives you a setting you can apply to all other pics rather than having to do each one individually
 
keirik said:
actually it was joke - did you not see the smiley

but then again you are wrong

as a previous poster said - any neural tone will work and a wedding dress works perfectly well

particularly when shooting in RAW it gives you a setting you can apply to all other pics rather than having to do each one individually
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Not if it is an off white wedding dress... which from what I understand many of them are these days. Neutral is every tone between balck and white - as soon as there is even a hint of colour then that will put the white balance out.

Definitly better to go prepared with a car/white balance lens cap etc than the hope the brides dress is white!
 
keirik said:
actually it was joke - did you not see the smiley

but then again you are wrong

as a previous poster said - any neural tone will work and a wedding dress works perfectly well

particularly when shooting in RAW it gives you a setting you can apply to all other pics rather than having to do each one individually
Click to expand...

Sorry, I thought it was a joke but then again, as RS says above, dresses are often not neutral and I though someone might take you literally.

The whole point of a custom balance is to get the colour dead right, which also means reading off 'grey' tarmac or paving as also suggested above is almost bound to be slightly off. All you need is a piece of white paper in your pocket, pop it on the ground and read off that.
 
HoppyUK said:
Sorry, I thought it was a joke but then again, as RS says above, dresses are often not neutral and I though someone might take you literally.

The whole point of a custom balance is to get the colour dead right, which also means reading off 'grey' tarmac or paving as also suggested above is almost bound to be slightly off. All you need is a piece of white paper in your pocket, pop it on the ground and read off that.
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I know what you mean but if you shoot in RAW then it doesn't really matter what you use as long as you have something that you can then apply across all the shots

admittedly a pure white is better but if I have a dress I can use then I'll use that and then apply the same correction across all the pics
 
J Bruja said:
Here is a link to video tutorial on white balance cards, the type I use.
I've posted this link elsewhere on this forum also.

http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/WhiBal/01/
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Pseudo-science marketing nonsense from the same company that wants us to spend $250 on a gadget to check focusing accuracy :shrug:

Accurate white balance is not difficult, and need not cost a penny.
 
NigelPaul said:
Well with my expodisc I feel I have less messing about in Adobe Raw deciding on WB.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1ZAmRO6ai8&feature=related
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Compared to what? Sure the Expodisc works well, but is this really a problem that needs a £70 solution?

Interestingly, Expodisc also make a 'portrait' version which deliberately warms up the white balance (ie makes it deliberately wrong) because it sometimes makes skin tones look nicer. Which just goes to show that there is no such thing as 'correct' white balance, but only what 'looks' right.
 
I was hoping you'd reply to this Richard. I actually have the warm version. I do agree that you are right. If you haven't got one already, then perhaps spending all that money is a waste of time. :shrug: The thing is I bought one a couple of years ago when my panel failed for LSWPP. I was told that my WB was a little in-consistent and to help me with this an expodisc was a graet tool. It does saves you time in PP and it does make me more consistent, so I suppose it is how good you are with PP? What ya reckon? :)
 
Richard King said:
Often wondered about this

Even shooting RAW, if your colour balance is a mile off, then you risk injecting noise or lack of contrast into the final image

It depends what your camera actually does when you alter the colur balance. If it activly adjusts the output of the RGB chanels, then we really need to get WB right - in camera
Click to expand...

If you shoot in RAW all the white balance is appended to the file, the RAW file itself is exactly what comes out of the sensor + ISO, or at least, that's what I've been lead to believe. The processing by the JPEG engine is appended to the image (white balance, contrast, levels and so on), the data isn't overwritten in the output.
 
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NigelPaul said:
I was hoping you'd reply to this Richard. I actually have the warm version. I do agree that you are right. If you haven't got one already, then perhaps spending all that money is a waste of time. :shrug: The thing is I bought one a couple of years ago when my panel failed for LSWPP. I was told that my WB was a little in-consistent and to help me with this an expodisc was a graet tool. It does saves you time in PP and it does make me more consistent, so I suppose it is how good you are with PP? What ya reckon? :)
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If it works for you Nigel, then that's good. White balance is obviously important, I just don't think it's that hard (expensive) to sort out.

You mention consistency, and I would say that's actually more important than technical accuracy. If you've got a series of pictures where the bride's dress is changing, then that will look pretty bad. Far worse than if they were all the same, even if they were all slightly wrong.

I think the best way to sort it in a wedding situation is probably to include a grey card in one of the frames every time the light changes, ie outside in sun, shade, indoors, with flash etc. I think some photographers get the bride or someone to hold a grey card (or a white one, so long as it doesn't get over exposed and blown out) and then use the dropper in post processing to reference that. You can then tweak that how you like and every similar frame will be identical.

Just on the accuracy thing, the colour of an object you see is the colour of the light reflected off it. So in that sense, the naked and unadulterated Raw will always be technically 100% accurate regardless of the light - it just doesn't look that way because our brains adjust what we see so that it looks the same in daylight or room light or whatever even though it actually is not. Hence the subjectiveness of it all.

If you compare extremes - say tungsten room light against flash - then because the tungsten element doesn't actually have much blue light in it anyway, it's very hard to modify everything in post processing to produce some colours that are in fact hardly there at all.
 
Thanks Richard for your reply.

I think the best way to sort it in a wedding situation is probably to include a grey card in one of the frames every time the light changes, ie outside in sun, shade, indoors, with flash etc. I think some photographers get the bride or someone to hold a grey card (or a white one, so long as it doesn't get over exposed and blown out) and then use the dropper in post processing to reference that. You can then tweak that how you like and every similar frame will be identical.
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Yeah, seen Mark Cleghorn vids where he uses a greycard in each different light situatation.

In rushed situations I must admit I use AWB, but hence my failed LSWPP.

Since I have already spent the bucks on an expodisc, I'll probably carry on using it, but reccommend to the OP what you have written.

Always appreciate your advice and think it's time you had a book out!
 
Thank you for that Nigel :) Unfortunately, books involve a huge amount of work and, since the internet arrived, very little money. And there are also quite a few already about!

That's not to say it wouldn't be a good idea, especially when someone like Bryan Peterson seems to have made a very nice living out of his extremely popular and massively over-rated book Understanding Exposure.

Here's what he has to say in his brand new, revised edition of said book, on this very topic. "It's my opinion that, next to the histogram, the white balance (WB) setting is one of the most over-rated controls..." He then goes on to say that he only ever uses the Cloudy setting (for everything) as he likes it nice and warm :gag: And BTW, that is all he has to say about histograms in the entire 176 pages of esoteric waffle about understanding exposure! :thinking: It's a mad world :)
 
I like many of the vids of B P on youtube. Never read his books though. Yes, there is one vid on youtube where he states he uses cloudy WB 98% of the time. That's one I ignore, but I can't help but liking the geezer.
And his catchphrase at the end.................you keep shooting!...classic!;)

Write an e-book for down loading, I'm sure you'll make a living. ;)
 
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