[pentaxfall]

, what I'm looking to achieve is consistent incorrectness so that the RAW

AWB is driven by logic so it should give consistent incorrectness for a given light setting. On similar lines I use copy & paste as much as possible because it is easy to correct later

[PDL]

Carry a 18% grey card with you and shoot it under the lighting conditions (I bought a package of two Kodak 8x10 in. cards and cut one of them into 4x5 in. cards). On my K20D I shot using daylight white balance and corrected the color balance in post. On my K-3II I use AWB, but still correct in post. I also have a X-Rite Color Checker and a "classic" color checker card I have in my bag all the time. When shooting under difficult conditions, I hall out either the 18% grey card or the color checker and take a shot.

One of the first things I do in post is set the color balance. In Lightroom I can set it using the Color Checker Passport process or plugin. In Capture One I just open the image of the test shot and use the white balance picker on the 18% area. Usually works like a charm.

Of course on my latest shoot at new location (last Saturday and Sunday) I did not shoot the targets and I spent at least an hour getting the images to look "right". Mixed lighting is the worst. The new venue is a Church with skylights, Tungsten can lights slowly being switched over to CFL/LEDs. I hate it when I do stupid things.

The general rules are - measure, don't guess and the LCD on your camera lies - just use the histogram and the "blinkies" for exposure.

[leekil]

AWB is driven by logic so it should give consistent incorrectness for a given light setting. On similar lines I use copy & paste as much as possible because it is easy to correct later

It may be driven by logic, but since the actual subject of the image changes constantly, you can get sometimes get variation even under the same light.

---------- Post added 12-06-17 at 01:15 AM ----------

I second Brooke's suggestion to make a custom white balance while shooting, if you can. You can do it off something white, like the bride's dress, if it's white. This seems to be able to bring extreme lighting back into the RAW range in cases where it might not be possible in post.

[BruceBanner]

I've just tried to do an epic reply to multiple people here but I keep getting this message;



Any ideas why this is happening?

[emalvick]

The best solution is to shoot RAW if you can. At that point, in the camera, you can do whatever makes sense to you, and correct it in post-processing later.

I've tried a lot of variations of what has been suggested above. I've set my camera to a steady 5500k, daylight, awb, location specific (with a gray card), etc. Any of them can work, but for me, I really hated trying the shot specific as it took time while shooting that I didn't want to take. Using a constant wb can work most of the time, but I've also had it put me in situations where the tinting made it difficult to judge whether the shot was otherwise OK. In the end, I mostly just use awb. I have a gray card, and will often take a shot of it in what I see is challenging light conditions.

In PP, I will use a gray card shot to set the WB and then make that setting constant across all the similar images. In landscape shots, I less often have gray card shots and will just manually adjust a shot or two to get a WB I like, and then use the setting across all the images. The only time I probably wouldn't do this is (1) I set the white balance by location or shot, of which the effort above was essentially made during the shoot or (2) when there is only a shot or two per location (like when I am hiking) and the awb does a good enough job.

I have to say that with my K3, the AWB is not bad. My own problem is that even with a gray card, I like my shots to generally be a little warm of what cameras or software consider correct / neutral.

Finally, in terms of white balancing off of something neutral in an image; it doesn't always work as nicely as you might hope. If something is "white" it may not be white or blown out, and making that correction can cause more problems. There is a reason gray cards are preferred.