# A Good Day to Stay Inside...



## MT Stringer (May 21, 2004)

and tinker.

I was practicing setting a custom white balance on my camera. The lighting in the kitchen is flourescent and the light in the dining room is incadescent. So, I took a close up shot of an 18% gray card (with the lens on manual focus and slightly out of focus), then followed Canon's directions to set the custom white balance by using the pic as reference.

To do that on a 20D...
1) In the menu, choose "Custom White Balance",
2) The image you just took will appear on the LCD, choose "Set".
3) Push the AF-WB button and choose the icon for "Custom White Balance".
That should do it.

I think it turned out pretty good. Instead of having a yellowish cast, the colors look to be right on the money. The pic was posted with no post processing other than to resize for the web.

I hope you find this tip helpfull. Try it with your camera in artificial lighting.

I hope to do the same tonight at the basketball game. I'll be combining sodium vapor lights with flash.


----------



## Koru (Sep 25, 2006)

Mike, do you have to reset the white balance every time you are photographing under different lighting conditions, or is it a one time only thing?


----------



## MT Stringer (May 21, 2004)

Yes, if you are inside and the lighting is artificial, this would be a good way to set the camera so the pictures will turn out OK. When I take a pic normally inside the house, they always turn out with a yellowish cast.

Read through your manual about "Custom White Balance" and practice it at home. See if the pics look better.

Note: Most of the time for outdoor shuff, I leave the white balance set to AWB - Auto white balance.

Mike


----------



## deebo (May 22, 2004)

excellent choice in beverage Mike, i just downed one here at work. Man i love that stuff!


----------



## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

Mike, just wondering, why did you choose an 18% gray card? Is that the standard or is it because of the light source you are shooting in? Could you have used an white card to achive the same effect?
Been reading about CWB for my S5 and was thinking of getting a white card. Do i need both?


----------



## MT Stringer (May 21, 2004)

Fred, I don't know how to explain it in technical terms, but the 18% gray is the standard. You could also use a white card or sheet of paper. I read where one guy saw a video camera guy at a college basketball game shoot a white styrofoam cup to get his reference.

It just so happened I have a Kodak Neutral test card. It's 30 years old - gray on one side and 90% white on the other. I've had this package since my early days of photography and never used it.

I'll look for a link I saw the other day and post it.

EDIT: Here's a note from the instructions for the gray card:

"Basically, meter readings of the test card are measurements of incident illumination. They provide a reliable method of exposure determination, and are also useful in adjusting the lighting ratio, check lighting distribution, and controlling background rendering."

Mike


----------



## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

OK ....No need to mike, I understand, My inside pics have been a little off color and have been reading about the CWB. I just didnt know if the color of the card made a difference as to what light one is shooting in.

Thanks Mike.


----------



## Cutter (Jun 23, 2004)

Good tips Mike. It is my opinion that proper white balance and exposure are the biggest improvements to photo quality. And the nice thing about a grey card, is it is easy to get perfect exposure everytime (when convenient).

"I think" if you dial in perfect exposure on your camera settings, auto white-balance will work fine. I love using the grey card. Photos really pop when I use it.


----------



## MT Stringer (May 21, 2004)

So, you should be able to use a white sheet of paper, hold it upright in the light and take a picture of it so that it fills the frame. Out of focus will let the image be soft and uniform across the sheet.
Mike


----------



## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

Will do......Thanks Mike


----------



## Captain Mike (Nov 20, 2006)

Back in the days of film cameras an emergency substitute for a gray card is the palm of your hand. I assume it will work the same for digital...


----------



## RustyBrown (May 29, 2004)

Ah yes the opposing POV. First of all MTS your shot looks perfect on my screens and for you I think the gray card is perfect. Don't forget though that presently the sensors can only be set for one WB, so if you mix sources you may get one right, but not the other.

I'm sure I'll draw some ire for this, but I shoot AWB almost all the time. I do this because I shoot RAW and I shoot in light that is constantly changing at the beginning and end of the day. I see letting the camera make it's adjustments as an advantage and if something doesn't look right I can correct it in my RAW processing. It's also one less thing for me to worry about changing back.

In regard to multiple color temps I can process the same image in two versions one for shade without the bluish tint and one for daylight w/o the amber tint. I've got a articular image in mind I'll try to post tonight.


----------



## fishphoto (Mar 3, 2005)

Like Rusty, I always used to set my camera on auto WB because I shoot in Raw and it really doesn't matter which WB setting you go with becase that is all taken care of in your RAW converter. This is what I used to do....

Now that I am addicted to Lightroom for all of my color corrections, I usually pick a white balance setting other than auto. I do this because the auto setting tries to set up the correct WB specifically for every shot. This means the setting is slightly different to start with and it is a little more difficult to make a set of photos consistent in PP. If they all have the same WB set to begin with, I can nudge the setting however I like for one photo, then apply it to the whole shoot in lightroom with two or three clicks. This keeps all of your photos consistent from each shoot. Before I started doing this, all of my photos would look slightly different from each other.

Another thing I have noticed is that I don't always want to have PERFECT white balance in every shot. There is a lot of psychology in color and it is often preferable to be a little bit off of perfect. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I tend to think it is a little too much work to try to set up the perfect white balance every time - at least for my kind of photography.


----------



## RustyBrown (May 29, 2004)

fishphoto said:


> Another thing I have noticed is that I don't always want to have PERFECT white balance in every shot.


Imperfection is the key to Brett's strive for perfection.

I'm guilty as well on that one Brett.

BTW in Camera Raw I can select any number of images and set them to the same WB. It's great for matching shots or if the compositon doesn't change much.


----------



## MT Stringer (May 21, 2004)

> BTW in Camera Raw I can select any number of images and set them to the same WB. It's great for matching shots or if the compositon doesn't change much.


I need to check up on that option. I use the software that came with the camera - Digital Photo Professional. Up until now, I have been doing each pic individually. That just won't work if I shoot 200 pics in each of 3 ball games.

Since I have Paint Shop Pro, I can't use Lightroom. Bummer! 

Mike


----------



## Gator_Nutz (Sep 27, 2006)

I just learned yesterday about changing the WB in any number of images all at the same time. In CS3 you can do it in Bridge or in PS. It's all the same Camera Raw program anyway. Since my Nikon Lighting Seminar was cancelled, I signed up on Kelby Training and have started digging into a lot of their on-line training. For the price, it is teaching me a lot of things that probably would have taken me a long time to figure out on my own, if ever. I can highly recommend it to other beginners such as myself.
(I also learned some about using the grey card to set WB. I got one from the back of my Photoshop book. Another Kelby item) And I shoot almost 100% RAW as well. Sometimes I will shoot RAW and JPEG depending on what I am working on. I'll use the jpegs for the quick and dirty results but still have the RAW file if I need to do something with it in PP.


----------



## RustyBrown (May 29, 2004)

Ok, I came home and zonked out, but I remembered to follow up on this. Here's the shot that came to mind. How's this one for a challenge? You've got snow shot in the shade with warm morning sun falling on the mountain in the background.

Technically this shot is a huge challenge, but by creating duplicate images with the correct white balances (and exposures in this case) I didn't turn the snow blue or the mountain so warm it looked wrong.

What do you think?


----------



## fishphoto (Mar 3, 2005)

Looks good to me. This is one of those situations where the split toning in Lightroom would come in handy.


----------

