[Soundguy]

Photos are from Easter Sunday at church. With tungsten, halogen lighting, stained glass windows and natural oak woodwork, white balance seems to be all over the place. Even PE5 post processing does not give me what I expected to see. Two photos attached. One with on camera 360 flash, other in ambient light.
K10d, 18-55 kit lens.

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Last edited by Soundguy; 03-31-2008 at 07:17 PM. Reason: missed attaching photos

[Lowell Goudge]

although too late for this time, you might want to go back to the church and play with the W settings of the K10D.

I shoot almost exclusively in JPEG and found it quite easy to get what I want, in camera.

Simply take a shot with the lighting you want, and press the Fn button, and select WB.

you should see the last image you took, and then you can see it change interactively on the screen as you change settings, until you get the color you wnat. With these settings every follow on shot will be as you have selected

[Soundguy]

Oops...missed attachments

[Venturi]

although too late for this time, you might want to go back to the church and play with the W settings of the K10D.

I shoot almost exclusively in JPEG and found it quite easy to get what I want, in camera.

Simply take a shot with the lighting you want, and press the Fn button, and select WB.

you should see the last image you took, and then you can see it change interactively on the screen as you change settings, until you get the color you wnat. With these settings every follow on shot will be as you have selected

Something I stumbled upon a few days back is that you can do the same thing in RAW or JPEG without actually taking a shot. This may be in the Magic Lantern Guide but if so I skimmed over it or just missed it...

1. First frame up a shot, any shot, and focus in.
2. Press the Fn button and go to WB. Depending on your custom settings you may need to select one of the other WB settings than AWB.
3. Point the camera back at your subject again and pull the Preview toggle - DO NOT re-focus or touch any other buttons. If you do, go back to step 2.
4. The shot will appear in your LCD and you can then scroll thru the WB options and tweak them with the thumb pad until you get what you want.
5. Press OK until you leave the Fn menu.
6. Start shooting.

I'm still struggling a bit with WB myself, but when I remember to take this step it certainly has helped.

[Pentaxtic]

Something I stumbled upon a few days back is that you can do the same thing in RAW or JPEG without actually taking a shot. This may be in the Magic Lantern Guide but if so I skimmed over it or just missed it...

1. First frame up a shot, any shot, and focus in.
2. Press the Fn button and go to WB. Depending on your custom settings you may need to select one of the other WB settings than AWB.
3. Point the camera back at your subject again and pull the Preview toggle - DO NOT re-focus or touch any other buttons. If you do, go back to step 2.
4. The shot will appear in your LCD and you can then scroll thru the WB options and tweak them with the thumb pad until you get what you want.
5. Press OK until you leave the Fn menu.
6. Start shooting.

I'm still struggling a bit with WB myself, but when I remember to take this step it certainly has helped.

Thanks Venturi,

I never got around to using the Preview toggle till now.

[Soundguy]

I'll give those suggestions a try. I shoot a lot in churches and mixed lighting situations. White balance needs to be checked on every shot, but since I shoot exclusively in DNG the PP is relatively painless. By the way, after 35 years away from SLR, I love the control the K10d offers. It prompts a bit of planning, but the results are so rewarding. Hopefully the budget will allow for a prime and another long lens for portrait and wildlife shots.

[patrickt]

There is really no way to white balance when you have colored lights. I took some photos at a concert where the singer was lighted with a red, a blue, and a white spotlights. Hopeless to white balance. At times I'll be shooting from the street, with orange cast, into a restaurant that's rather blue. Can't balance that, either.

Sometimes the world just isn't balanced.

[leadbelly]

You can use the Manual WB function too. In scenarios where WB is all over the place, I press the fn button, choose manual WB, point (no need to get perfect focus) the camera to any white surface, choose a spot on the white I want "balanced", press ok...voila. Near perfect WB... if you want perfect, take time to tweak the manual WB with the X-Y diagram thingy until you get the white you want...

Usually I save these settings in User mode, so that when I go out in normal lighting conditions, I can use the usual presets or AWB, then when I go back in, I set the dial to User...

[Lowell Goudge]

The point is, that with either my method or the one by ventury, you get to see the iumage as you adjust, and you can decide what you want what you believe is white to look like.

I usuallly leave it a little warm, assumiong no color cast from colored lighting. If you have multi colored lighting, I usually either set to daylight, or tungston (depending on the predominant, non colored source, and let the colored sources cast what ever color they want, that is their purpose any way

[Peter Zack]

I'm going to deviate from the advice above. first the suggestions to manually set the WB with the first 1 or 2 shots you take are good ones. The LCD is generally big enough to tell you what is working and what isn't. But the process is slow and cumbersome, especially if the light changes or you move to a new spot.

I recently took a weekend class that was all about lighting, WB and indoor shooting. From that I learned I was doing several things the hard way. Now there are a couple of things you can do for accurate WB in almost any lighting situation.

1) shoot in RAW whenever possible due to the better latitude for later corrections.
2) get a Studio coach TheStudioCoach.com or some similar tool for manual WB setting.
3) shoot in matrix (multi pattern) metering.
4) carry a grey card to adjust exposure when needed and to later adjust WB errors.

So the process is as follows. Take the Studio Coach and set the camera on manual. Put the disk in a spot that will reflect the available light back at the camera. So if the light is coming through the windows with overhead lighting as well. Put the disk on the alter area so that the light from all sources hits the surface. Set the WB on the camera manually with the disk. Leave the camera in manual mode. If you want to shoot in other modes (Av etc) then that's fine but you'll have better control of the camera in manual, especially if you're shooting with a flash.

Now you can use the grey card for exposure adjustments if you want or simply use the meter to get the exposure values with the green button.

If you are taking portrait shots or other images that you're not certain the WB setting will work. then put the grey card somewhere in a corner of the image (to be cropped out later) and then you can make the adjustment you need in the software later. If your grey card is older than 18 months old, then toss it out. The dye's in the paper/cardboard will change colour over time. If you have one of the small 2x3" plastic clip on cards then it should hold the colour (if it's stored in a dark place) for several years and these are handy since you can clip it to something that will be in the scene.

If you want to manually set the WB with a simple white card, then make sure it's a true white card. they are cheap and much more consistent than a piece of paper or someone's shirt.

[Canada_Rockies]

Photos are from Easter Sunday at church. With tungsten, halogen lighting, stained glass windows and natural oak woodwork, white balance seems to be all over the place. Even PE5 post processing does not give me what I expected to see. Two photos attached. One with on camera 360 flash, other in ambient light.
K10d, 18-55 kit lens.

Hi, sound guy. I just leave my K10D in AWB most of the time, except for tungsten lighting. I shoot in RAW and correct the white balance in Lightroom (my editor). The Pentax Photo Editor can do it as well, as can most editors.

Particularly with mixed lighting, as you faced, there is really no other way to do it except shot by shot on site. As you have probably read by now, you would spend an inordinate amount of time on each shot playing with the manual white balance.

[D W]

Just shoot Raw, you do not have time to WB every single shot. The on camera LCD is OK for preview but was not designed for critcal WB.

Since each part of the church is lit by a different light source the one balance for all method will not work. You WB for one scene and move the camera 1deg any direction the mix of the light changes and your WB is off again.

[simons-photography]

just do it in post processing

[imadethis]

Since the lighting was mixed from so many different light sources, your best bet would be to:

1. Yes, shoot RAW
2. Shoot a Gray card for reference
3. Set white balance to the main light source
4. Match your flash color temperature to the main light by using color correction gels:
Rosco Cinegels are a great source for gels; they're free from B&H + shipping costs

In the end, if your lighting is mixed to a point where you can't get a good WB, do the above and also overpower the ambient lighting with flash, and have the ambient for fill light.

Good luck!