[lotech]

Hi there,

I don't have a K1 yet but looking forward to it, I just want to ask a simple question, hope some of the lucky guys that owns the K1 can give me an answer !

I have been using the K3 for 2-3 yrs., there is one problem in particular keeps bugging me. I shoot lot of low light photos under street light, that call for near max ISO on the K3, I tried AWB but it didin't work well, all the photos came out yellowish to the point that can't be corrected, some time the photos even turn out reddish, I thought it was the high ISO mess things up and don't bother to try menu white balance, but just tonight I took some low lights at Tungsten and WOW, all the photos turn out great with correct color, much much better than using auto setting, and the good thing is the K3 allows while balance override when shoot with flash, so that I can keep using Tungsten while shoot with flash when I need to without changing anything. So now I know the high ISO on the K3 isn't too bad, but don't know about the K1, I believe bigger sensor means better low light quality but what about AWB ?

[lithedreamer]

Have you tried Multi Auto While Balance on the K-3?

[lotech]

Yes, but only slightly better than without.

[Bruce Clark]

Another thing you might look at is White Balance Adjustable Range ( C 2 11 on K-7) This can adjust the white balance even if White Balance is set to a specific light source and can have weird effects especially on low level exposures. Default setting is 1. I set mine to 2 which is OFF.

[goatsNdonkey]

It's too bad the camera can't automatically bracket a choice of white-balance settings. You could do that manually changing the settings between shots of the same subject, but it would slow things down.

[lithedreamer]

It's too bad the camera can't automatically bracket a choice of white-balance settings. You could do that manually changing the settings between shots of the same subject, but it would slow things down.

You could give this feedback to Ricoh directly, it does indeed sound useful.

[southlander]

Shooting RAW and editing afterwards allows WB adjustment without the problems associated with having the camera's best AWB guess baked into the JPEG.


Alternately, I find the bundled Pentax DCU editing software quite amazing in the way it can, after the event, reprocess JPEGs to the various standard Pentax WB settings with generally very good results.


Having said that, shooting my K-3 at ISO12800 and very low light levels I find WB does get challenging even with RAW processing, generally with a strong drift to a murky yellow to counteract.

[rawr]

all the photos came out yellowish to the point that can't be corrected, some time the photos even turn out reddish

While the K-3 and K-1 are able to meter and AF down to -3 EV [ie VERY dark], it's possible that in dim light and perhaps with a slow lens the camera metering sensor may simply not be able to get enough colour data out of the scene to take an accurate white balance reading.

It is also possible that if you routinely use spot metering or even centre-weighted sometimes, you may effectively be 'crippling' the metering sensor, by limiting how much of a scene it is allowed to read, hence not helping it obtain an accurate WB reading.

Plus often street lighting, and stadium lighting too, will subtly cycle colours or even flicker, which has been known to cause AWB problems for many a camera.

Shooting RAW and editing afterwards allows WB adjustment without the problems associated with having the camera's best AWB guess baked into the JPEG.

+1. Plus always bring a grey card.

[goatsNdonkey]

We should also consider that there are a lot of kinds of street lights: mercury vapor, sodium vapor, tungsten, halogen...., and a street could have more than one kind in some cases. Maybe something about the color profile simply stumps the automatic system.

[lotech]

We should also consider that there are a lot of kinds of street lights: mercury vapor, sodium vapor, tungsten, halogen...., and a street could have more than one kind in some cases. Maybe something about the color profile simply stumps the automatic system.

Yes it's mix of tungsten and fluorescent too in some location there is no way to get a prefect WB, in comparsion Fuji excel in this area with much better overall result but lower max ISO and poor handling IMO, I suppose the camera should be able to do AWB as dim as it can focus, and I believe K1 with a bigger senor can do better too in low light.

[clackers]

Yes it's mix of tungsten and fluorescent too in some location .

But you just do this in post, painting the two areas with different temperatures.

You're a photographer and will be better at this than any camera.

[goatsNdonkey]

Yes it's mix of tungsten and fluorescent too in some location there is no way to get a prefect WB, in comparsion Fuji excel in this area with much better overall result but lower max ISO and poor handling IMO, I suppose the camera should be able to do AWB as dim as it can focus, and I believe K1 with a bigger senor can do better too in low light.

If the tungsten manual setting gives the best results, it is probably the best way to go. And, also, once you've discovered the manual white balance setting for a particular night time locality, you'll know what to do, unless and until something significant changes about lighting in that area.

I had some pictures turn out with kind of a funny color cast this summer, using my K10D. I had the camera set on AWB, as I usually do. Later I thought, why didn't I just set the white balance on "Cloudy"? The camera has a lot of settings. I guess I was forgetting I might have some responsibility for setting that one at least some of the time.

[Tan68]

We should also consider that there are a lot of kinds of street lights: mercury vapor, sodium vapor, tungsten, halogen...., and a street could have more than one kind in some cases. Maybe something about the color profile simply stumps the automatic system.

Mixed lighting...
I am suspicious that some landmarks are lighted with mixed lighting on purpose and this is done to hinder efforts of people taking pictures. This is mostly off topic but came to mind when you mentioned mixed lighting. Perhaps mixed lighting is used in some cathedrals with only aesthetics in mind.. maybe not :^)

I have heard whatever lighting used in temples and tombs in Egypt is evil to the point one photographer asked for lights to be turned off so pictures could be made using ambient light only. A tripod permit and daylight through temple doors and windows plus baksheesh works better...

+ sometimes it hard to use a graycard because arms are not long enough to reach the subject. i use AWB in the camera (to get its best guess), AWB in PP software (another best guess), and some element in the image (pick WB from anything that seems suitable but ensure color channels aren't clipped) to try refining WB. using these three and switching back and forth between image variants helps. switching back and forth between different edits of the same image helps a lot, i think.

[lithedreamer]

+ sometimes it hard to use a graycard because arms are not long enough to reach the subject. i use AWB in the camera (to get its best guess), AWB in PP software (another best guess), and some element in the image (pick WB from anything that seems suitable but ensure color channels aren't clipped) to try refining WB. using these three and switching back and forth between image variants helps. switching back and forth between different edits of the same image helps a lot, i think.

If you're interested in a longer distance grey card solution, there's a product called Expodisc, a white balance screw on 'filter' that you shoot through once per lighting situation, like a grey card. I'd probably combine it with Xume filters to make things quicker.

[goatsNdonkey]

There's always converting the images to Black-and-White....