[BruceBanner]

I have an event on Sunday, it will involve shooting at various times of the day and different environments (indoors, outdoors including flash use). I will be using primes, two bodies and also doing some lens swapping.

From a post processing perspective, I am looking to try and get some consistency to my days work, right across the board, so I think it makes sense to take my camera off AWB for every User Mode setting I have set up (and for the non User Modes as well), on both bodies. Hopefully this will make PP easier, I'm hoping I can edit the first pic, get the kinda warmth I'm looking for, save the preset and apply to the rest of the shots with some Reference Photoing to aid in getting that consistency. From what I hear this is a wise move, but I am a little lost as to what I should change my white balance too

I mean, if I set it to 'Daylight' but then continue to take shots indoors and into the evening.. what then? It will be far too much to continually adjust camera body white balance on all modes on both bodies as I move from environment to environment, is there a better 'all rounder' white balance to use?

TIA!

Bruce

[mcgregni]

AWB is the "all-rounder". The pre-sets are tailored to specific lighting types and temperatures. I would try to visit the location beforehand and take some test shots....try the appropriate pre-set and tweak with the fine tuning controls. Remember or write down the best settings for each of the different environments . If mixing flash with ambient then correction gels for the flash head is a good idea.

In practice, depending on your experience level, AWB may well give you the best results. There's a lot going on and loads to worry about at this sort of event, so finely controlled WB ight be one thing too many, apart from when ypu're in the same lighting for a long time.

Bruce. Check out this demo thread I did over at PentaxUser ....mixed lighting technique, with gelled flash and WB considerations all explained ....

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/indoor-events--mixed-lighting-techniques-55493

[BruceBanner]

AWB is the "all-rounder". The pre-sets are tailored to specific lighting types and temperatures. I would try to visit the location beforehand and take some test shots....try the appropriate pre-set and tweak with the fine tuning controls. Remember or write down the best settings for each of the different environments . If mixing flash with ambient then correction gels for the flash head is a good idea.

In practice, depending on your experience level, AWB may well give you the best results. There's a lot going on and loads to worry about at this sort of event, so finely controlled WB ight be one thing too many, apart from when ypu're in the same lighting for a long time.

Bruce. Check out this demo thread I did over at PentaxUser ....mixed lighting technique, with gelled flash and WB considerations all explained ....

Indoor Events, Mixed Lighting Techniques

Thanks for that, I must pop off to bed now but I shall definitely look at that link later.

My experience is fairly limited, my understanding of AWB is that it does different things depending upon the environment you are in. If it see's too much of any one colour (such as fall leaves) then it does weird stuff that is actually not what the photographer wants. My point is that I will be in different scenes, and selecting various preset modes, I will not have time to go "ahhh... so I'm in this place now, I should set WB to this or that''. I'm actually ok with the white balance being incorrect for the shot, what I'm looking to achieve is consistent incorrectness so that the RAW files can all be changed via an initial preset created off one image and then applied to the rest of the images, hopefully with minimal extra tweaks.

But I'm not sure this is what would happen in practice. For example, if I chose 'Daylight' for the entire day, and I shot in and outdoors, in shade, on clouds, sometimes with flash, sometimes not etc, would it however give a more consistent white balance for me to correct across the days shoot (from multiple lenses)?

What I'm trying to avoid is AWB moving around, I fire up LR, get an image, correct the white balance as I see fit (perhaps even consciously deciding to make the image 'warmer') save the preset, but now with the next AWB, applying the same preset is now giving very different skin tones entirely because AWB did something different with that shot.

In essence I think I'm wanting fixed WB for the days shooting, hoping that this would make PP smoother than 1000 pictures where I cannot easily apply a preset to get each shot to have a similar style/warmth etc to it.

[mcgregni]

You will need to fix and change the WB specifically for each different environment as you shoot, in order to get the sort of consistency you want. In my view it is better to get the WB right in camera at the time of capture, even for RAW, rather than rely on corrections in processing later.

The sort of major jumps, as you're thinking, from an incorrect setting to a correction using a processing formula that applies to all colour temperatures is likely to lead to grief I fear. ..... It would probably be better to stick with AWB and make minor tweaks to each shot if needed.

But nothing beats a proper fixed WB setting tailored to the actual lighting in which you are working in.

[savoche]

I fire up LR, get an image, correct the white balance as I see fit (perhaps even consciously deciding to make the image 'warmer') save the preset, but now with the next AWB, applying the same preset is now giving very different skin tones entirely because AWB did something different with that shot.

Is it possible to adjust WB by a relative amount by use of a preset in LR? I thought the only way was to have the preset apply a fixed WB value (regardless of the "As shot" value). At least that's how I use presets - and then it doesn't matter what values the AWB picked at the time of shooting.

Apart from that, I think mcgregni gives sound advice both on getting the WB as correct as possible when shooting and on the mixed lighting.

[pathdoc]

The current crop of bodies copes reasonably well with WB shifts that are not very far from their inbuilt set points, good enough for most amateur work. The professional photographer with time and opportunity can measure the light with a sophisticated enough meter to tune their WB in kelvins for the shooting environment or use a white card as a reference to match in post. Somewhere in between is where you are. It depends on how quickly the situation is changing around you, and how much time you have to fiddle about between shots.

Going back from even the K-5 (let alone the K-1) to the *istDS (which I do from time to time for Takumar and analogue TTL work) was a shock; the AWB on that thing is godawful, and one MUST make deliberate changes to be anywhere NEAR right. And I can't take any pics inside at work right now; there's fluoro lights everywhere, and for various reasons I currently have a colour film in my MX. Time, I think, to buy a fluoro-daylight filter or two.

[Roadboat24]

Shoot Raw

[mcgregni]

And then what? ....

[Digitalis]

AWB is the work of the devil, in my experience it rarely gives an accurate white. I set all my cameras to a manual white balance of 5500K - I shoot raw so I can make adjustments as required later down the track. I use 5500K as a baseline because it is by far the most common white balance value I work under*. For commercial work I work with a set of camera profiles that are tailored for 3200K 5500K and 7500K. I do this because correcting the white point isn't quite enough for colour critical applications: you have to compensate for the inherent spectral sensitivity curve of the sensor as well.

*HMI lights are around 5500K~5700K, compact flash units vary from 4800K~6400K, studio flash monobloc units tend to be more consistent depending upon their design and electronics used but typically you can expect a variation of 5200K~5600K.

[Na Horuk]

I mean, if I set it to 'Daylight' but then continue to take shots indoors and into the evening.. what then?

Well, you will see your photos will be tinted. Part of DSLR is that you have to make choice and choose the right settings. Sometimes for each shot separately. This is exactly why AWB is so helpful - its not perfect, but it takes away one choice to make.
I shoot raw and use AWB most of the time. Only switch from it to Daylight or Tungsten or CTE, in specific cases. And since I shoot raw, I can easily change the WB in PP without damaging image quality.

[CarlJF]

From a post processing perspective, I am looking to try and get some consistency to my days work, right across the board, so I think it makes sense to take my camera off AWB for every User Mode setting I have set up (and for the non User Modes as well), on both bodies. Hopefully this will make PP easier, I'm hoping I can edit the first pic, get the kinda warmth I'm looking for, save the preset and apply to the rest of the shots with some Reference Photoing to aid in getting that consistency. From what I hear this is a wise move, but I am a little lost as to what I should change my white balance too

For this to work, you need to have the exact same lighting and light quality on all pictures. If not, you will get less consistency between shots by fixing the white balance...

I mean, if I set it to 'Daylight' but then continue to take shots indoors and into the evening.. what then? It will be far too much to continually adjust camera body white balance on all modes on both bodies as I move from environment to environment, is there a better 'all rounder' white balance to use?

This is why you want to use AWB and shoot in RAW. AWB will try its best to provide the same WB rendering between shots, although it might not be the most pleasing or the one you're looking for. But if all shots have about the same "warmness" or "coldness" it's easy to adjust them to your liking in batch during PP.

IMHO, when soothing an event, there's already enough things going on to take care about to begin worrying about getting a perfect WB. It's better to focus on getting some solid shots by working on the usual suspects: framing, exposure and, the most important of all, timing. Because this last one can't be corrected at all in PP it must be done right at the moment of the shot.

[mcgregni]

I think what Bruce is imagining is that if WB is fixed (eg on "Daylight" or 5500K) , then a pre-set adjustment in processing will bring everything back in line . The problem is that the "correction" needed will change for every different environment and lighting temperature. It is probably easier to check carefully before shooting in each environment and tailor the camera setting precisely before capture.

At least that way you will have the needed consistency within each environment. For skin tones this approach is likely to lead to the best results I feel. You simply can't avoid changes when you move into different lighting ....either you must adjust the camera setting again to suit, or if using a processing pre-set then that would have to he specifically created for each different environment.

Honestly, given that you're said you don't have much experience with all this yet, the best course for now is to use AWB and he resigned to the fact that you will have deal with each of your keepers individually and tweak as needed. You might be lucky with quite a few of them.

Once you've had time to read up on and try out some colour balancing and mixed lighting techniques then you look for a more professionally oriented workflow.

[dms]

I shoot in raw and then in Photoshop camera raw application I sample a neutral part of the image to set the WB--and then globally use it--for all images likely taken in same lighting. And also do minor tweaks about it, till skin tones seem right.

Usually: the neutral part is the white of someone's eye (less often a white article of clothing, napkin/paper, candle, etc.).

In this process the initial WB setting could be AWB, tungsten, or whatever will give you a larger number of images that don't need change, or only minimal adjustment. My initial setting is usually tungsten, but these are theater photo's.

---------- Post added 12-04-17 at 01:23 PM ----------

BTW using flash in non-daylight lighting can lead to uncorrectable WB problems. In this case use a filter over the flash to correct the flash to match the ambient lighting. I very seldom use flash, and when I do it is the one built into the camera and usually indoors, so I pick the closest color correction filter I have (usually one for correcting daylight to tungsten) and am able to hold it in front of the flash bulb.

[SoloJoep]

In this case I would also vote AWB and shoot RAW (always).

Besides that my advice would be that before processing the images,
first group them by similarity (location/lighting/colour etc) and for each of these groups you can automate the WB correction (and other settings for that matter).
I don't believe there's a 'one fits all' automated fix to the problem, but grouping definitely helps to speed things up quite a bit.

IMHO AWB isn't all that bad as a starting point, and personally I would only worry about specific WB settings when using gels for example
since it's much more challenging to correct different colours separately in PP.

My 2 cents..

[ritro007]

And then what? ....

If you shoot RAW you can chance the whitebalance in Lightroom or PS or wathever you use to whatever whitebalance you like.