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08-11-2018, 02:45 PM   #1
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K1 Continuous Shooting Color Shifts

I am experiencing technical difficulties with my K-1 when shooting indoors. What I am seeing is a color shift between shots, which is especially noticeable with whitish backgrounds. The two attached photos will hopefully show what I am talking about. I shot them with a Tamron 70-200mm 2.8 lens at ISO 3200, 107mm, f/3.5 and 1/200 sec. I used AWB. The original files were DNG, and I just saved these unaltered via Lightroom CC Classic. Anybody else experience this? Could it be the tungsten correction? The light in the room was a mix of light from the window and probably tungsten from the overheads. Thanks.

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08-11-2018, 02:52 PM - 1 Like   #2
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Are you sure it was tungsten? If it was LED, fluorescent or CFL it would be easy to explain.
08-11-2018, 02:53 PM - 2 Likes   #3
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To be expected with AWB, I think- but the good news is you can change this (with one click) in post so that all the photos have the same WB.

You may get more consistent results OOC with the multi-segment WB mode, which is a sub-option under AWB.

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08-11-2018, 02:54 PM - 2 Likes   #4
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QuoteOriginally posted by Joe Dusel Quote
I used AWB
I suspect that's the reason.

08-11-2018, 03:14 PM   #5
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Probably the camera trying to decide between a white wall and the white area of the LCD projection.
08-11-2018, 03:20 PM - 1 Like   #6
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As others have already implied, Joe, if you're shooting multiple or bracketed frames of the same subject in broadly the same lighting, it's best to set a constant white balance rather than asking the camera to judge it for you. That's because minor changes in lighting (which is possible with artificial as well as natural light sources) and the camera's white balance algorithm can result in different white balance settings.

If needed, you can always make minor tweaks to the chosen shot(s) in post-processing
08-11-2018, 03:34 PM   #7
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Be aware of #15 under the custom setting C3 menu "WB Adjustable Range" too.

Even if you have chosen a specific white balance, the camera may think it is smarter than you are and adjust it anyway. I had this happen to my K5 when shooting flash - I'd get changes in the background (a redness variation) very similar to your effect:

Wacky white balance with remote trigger studio flashes for K5 - PentaxForums.com


Drove me nuts until I figured it out! Seems to me that when you set the white balance, the camera shouldn't diddle it.

08-11-2018, 03:35 PM   #8
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Thanks for all the responses. To be honest, I am not sure of the type of overhead lighting. The lights need to come on slowly to reach their maximum brightness. This is in an industrial space with high ceilings and large windows on the sides. It was some sort of retail space in it's previous life, and now it is used for community events. The projection screen does not seem to be the issue since I saw the problem in other shots which did not include it. Also, the color shift seems to be on just one half of the image in some cases.
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08-11-2018, 03:48 PM - 1 Like   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by Joe Dusel Quote
Thanks for all the responses. To be honest, I am not sure of the type of overhead lighting. The lights need to come on slowly to reach their maximum brightness. This is in an industrial space with high ceilings and large windows on the sides. It was some sort of retail space in it's previous life, and now it is used for community events. The projection screen does not seem to be the issue since I saw the problem in other shots which did not include it. Also, the color shift seems to be on just one half of the image in some cases.
The problem with a lot of man-made lighting sources, Joe, is that they're not necessarily constant. They may appear so to our eyes, but they could be pulsed and/or or show high frequency colour shifts that average out to an overall perception of one colour so far as the human eye is concerned. But shoot with a camera, and you're capturing a very specific point in time. You won't notice the difference through the viewfinder, but the camera's sensor does.

It becomes even more complicated if the sources of lighting are mixed types (as in this case) - especially so if you move just slightly between shots. My guess would be that the lighting through the window(s) may have changed ever so slightly between shots, but it's impossible to know without being there.

Of course, this can fool your custom white balance setting too, as that's also sampled at a specific point-in-time. But in this case you have an ideal solution, which is to set the white balance in post-processing by sampling the whiteboard

Last edited by BigMackCam; 08-11-2018 at 03:54 PM.
08-11-2018, 04:15 PM - 1 Like   #10
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Often the color balance of the light changes with the AC phase in conditions like this. Adding natural light to the mix makes things more difficult. One fix is to shoot at less than 1/60 second which will average things out over one AC cycle.
08-11-2018, 05:03 PM - 1 Like   #11
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First thing to rule out is the AWB. Look at the photos and see what color temperature the camera picked. If it's different between the two shots in question, then that's at least part of the problem, and you can fix it by setting both photos to the same color balance.

If all the color settings are the same, and the photos still show the color shift, then I think folks are right who are saying that it's the type of lights. Slow down the shutter until you get the entire color cycle for every shot, and that should stabilize things. As 77me said, if you slow all the way down to 1/60th, that seems like it should definitely work, but since some lights flicker at much higher frequencies, you may not have to slow down that far before the problem goes away.
08-11-2018, 08:07 PM - 1 Like   #12
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My guess is that it is most likely from the lights.
If you need to send jpegs right away and can't adjust from raw, set WB to a fixed value (but this won't fix shifts in the same image)
You can also experiment with multi area AWB, it's a setting next to standard awb in the menu, and for me it performs pretty well in this kind of situation (mixed light and fluorescent or led)
For out of camera jpeg output, you can test WB settings in camera by trying different raw development options on existing files

Last edited by aaacb; 08-11-2018 at 08:15 PM.
08-11-2018, 11:42 PM   #13
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Thanks all. Yeah, it probably is the lighting that is causing the issues. Next time I shoot in that space I will try shooting at a slower speed, and set the white balance to a fixed setting. I can fix the problems in Lightroom, but I would rather have less issues in the raw files to deal with in the first place.
08-12-2018, 03:21 AM - 1 Like   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by Joe Dusel Quote
Thanks all. Yeah, it probably is the lighting that is causing the issues. Next time I shoot in that space I will try shooting at a slower speed, and set the white balance to a fixed setting. I can fix the problems in Lightroom, but I would rather have less issues in the raw files to deal with in the first place.
Don't forget that the raw file has no WB assigned to it. The jpeg image you see initially will be a preview that uses the WB setting on your camera, but that is all. In a good raw converter you should be able to select the correct WB using your eye or a white/gray balance tool, and then apply that to all your raw images in one batch. There is nothing actually to fix.

This is one of the advantages of using raw capture. The WB is not set until you process the file.
08-12-2018, 05:56 AM - 1 Like   #15
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I had a similar problem where the back of a room used compact florescent bulbs, but the rest used incandescent bulbs. I had to set the WB separately for each shot depending on what lights were most prominent, and in some shots it was really tough because the foreground was one and the background the other. At least in that case the lights weren't flickering with different colors though!
Do remember that most casual observers probably won't notice subtle problems, so just get it really close, and make sure that you get skin tones right.
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