White balance

B

bwaysteve

If I use a color meter for available light(say tungsten in a shop window lighting a persons face)will this give me the same representation as if I white balanced to a gray card?Will it still read whites as white?
Will I have any problems with skin in post without correcting say 2950K to 3200K or just make sure the reading matches the camera Kelvin setting.
 
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dlevanchuk said:
2950K to 3200K is really not that much of the difference.. just do 3200k for tungsten, and 6400k for daylight. frame, focus, hit record. done!

don't overthink it ;)
Click to expand...

Daylight color temp changes throughout the day. With digital sub Alex and RED, especially, you definitely want to overthink it. xP Just sayin'.
 
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I used to never use custom, only used the presets, but starting with the last shoot started using it with an 18% grey card. If I am not mistaken custom affects more than just temp. I jiggers around the color space as well.
 
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I've had so many problems using custom white balance that I also stopped using them. Indoor and Outdoor presets only. Everything else is done using the "Film Look"... using filters on the camera and gels on the lights (the sun is just a light too) to adjust the color.
 
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I rarely use presets or color temp anymore, now almost exclusively do custom on a grey card. Custom adjusts the three color channels independently to create a balanced white - you don't get the same effect with the presets (at least with my camera, a 5D). An easy way to test this is to take a grey card out into direct sunlight, fill the screen with it and shoot it with a preset and custom. Now compare the color histogram on each and you'll see that custom will produce a histogram where all three channels are matched precisely while the presets will always be slightly out of alignment. In my experience this means custom gives you better skin tones, which in turn makes color correction easier because you don't have to spend much time matching and correcting skin from shot to shot and scene to scene.
 
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Gonzo_Entertainment said:
I used to never use custom, only used the presets, but starting with the last shoot started using it with an 18% grey card. If I am not mistaken custom affects more than just temp. I jiggers around the color space as well.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what you want to do. Get the WB as close to accurate as possible in camera using a grey card.
 
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I don't like the particular flavor of white I get from white balancing... too sanitary. and for some reason, I can't figure out how to replicate the color quality of real lights that I've digitally zapped out by white balancing it away.
 
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skin

The primary reason for my question is all about skin.I am using a D7000 and have in the past on D100 D300 used custom for stills.The Kelvin however has not been giving me a good match on what color I think I lit.I will test this.Thanks all.
 
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The presets tend to do much better than the custom ones. I just started post on our last shoot. The beginning of the shoot, the DP was insistent on custom WB... we were having problems with him changing the WB as I was adjusting the lighting necessitating twice as long to do our lighting setups as I was trying to hit a moving target (I was the lighting guy as I had much more experience with dramatic lighting than the DP). After the first weekend of shooting, I talked to him and he agreed to try using just the 2 presets... you can tell when that change happened as I'll have to do almost no primary grading on the images from the 2 presets... and I'll spend as much time on the rest of the footage (roughly 25% of the footage will take as much time as the other 75%).

Take the time to REALLY understand light as an entity and using the presets over the customs starts to make alot of sense. If you're shooting events that you have no control over whatsoever, then you should start diving into white balance... but even then, the bulbs in question are going to be mostly tungsten or fluorescent (buy a minus green filter for your camera in 1/2 and full - then run tungsten preset).

The DP was so impressed with the difference in his footage that I made a really fast convert to the method (film is done this way -- you choose the color temp of the capture at the store in really limited ranges, then adjust lighting to match). Try it, do all of the color adjustment outside the camera (you'll find you need almost none). Let me know how your footage changes -- make sure you set the preset to the appropriate setting.
 
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Take this or leave it, but remember one thing: White balance is crucial for cameras that are not spitting out a 10-bit 4:2:2 or higher compression scheme, and even then those still require a darned near perfect balance.

For these 8-bit 4:2:0 cameras, when you do not nail white balance in camera you're decreasing the image quality drastically. Might as well be recording 6-bit images at that point.

So again, take it or leave it, but if you take it... carry an 18% grey card with you and balance at the top of each scene.

Re-balance as the sun moves every two or three hours (forgot the rate).

Maximize your IQ.
 
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