Let's talk about...White Balance.

[toyota74]

I was going to ask about white balance in the "chat" thread but I know after a while people would move on to the next question and I wouldnt get the full answer that I need and its a pain having to go looking through the pages.So I going to start individual threads on ISO,WHITE BALANCE,FLASH etc and I would like everyone to pool their info here...

White Balance.....When I first started photography I kept on Auto W.B all the time,then I later changed to shade/cloudy for outdoor photography and stayed with those settings for 3 years.The other day I changed to "sunny" on an almost sunny day and imported the some pics to lightroom and moved the temp slider to the right(warm).As I was doing it the detail became much clearer and colour more natural....I repeated the same on more photos and the results were great.I cursed at myself for at least an hour afterwards because all along I had ignored W.B...normally I would have gone for the exposure slider straight away.
I want to hear form everyone on how they use white balance,be it outdoors,indoors,night time,people,editing and so on...you can post photos to show examples etc...
....Lets talk

[Tony]

I tend to put white balance on cloudy a lot. On sunnier days I usually switch to Auto WB, but sometimes I still stick to cloudy since it provides warmer colours, albeit less accurate.

I think I need to pay more attention to it and try out that technique you mentioned.

[glowrock]

I think white balance is something that many of us tend to forget about/ignore. I, sadly, tend to be one of those people, but I'm learning to be more diligent about checking my WB before shooting my first photo of the day when I'm out and about. It definitely can make a huge difference, one that cannot be easily made up for in post-processing later on.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[flar]

I use auto white balance but shoot RAW. You can adjust the white balance however you want with RAW.

If you want to adjust white balance correctly, you need to have your monitor calibrated, at least roughly. I did a photo set a couple months ago and edited the photos on my laptop, everything came out really green looking because I was used to my calibrated monitor at home.

[toyota74]

@Tony...it's not a technique,it's just that i never really bothered with the temp sliders...i always used the exposure,saturation and shadow sliders when really using the temp slider improved the image straight off.So what I'm gathering so far is that people are using auto and the presets and then while editing sort out the White balance first.

[Okayyou]

I'm fine with AWB 90% of the time. I noticed cameras have a more difficult time in the dark, often the scene is too cool. I'll adjust the color in post if I fell the need to. I think setting the WB manually is more important for studio shots than on the street.

[volguus zildrohar]

WB wasn't something I paid much attention to until some classes I took a couple of years ago. Up until that point a lot of my technical knowledge was self-learned and I never took the time to learn about WB although I noticed the difference the few times I adjusted it in the field.

Shooting RAW helps a lot, obviously. I tend to keep it on AWB unless the scene clearly calls for something different - dark/night photographs can be a real bitch, however. In some instances the range between too bloody warm and too goddamn cool still ain't quite what you're looking for.

[Okayyou]

Originally Posted by volguus zildrohar

WB wasn't something I paid much attention to until some classes I took a couple of years ago. Up until that point a lot of my technical knowledge was self-learned and I never took the time to learn about WB although I noticed the difference the few times I adjusted it in the field.

Shooting RAW helps a lot, obviously. I tend to keep it on AWB unless the scene clearly calls for something different - dark/night photographs can be a real bitch, however. In some instances the range between too bloody warm and too goddamn cool still ain't quite what you're looking for.

I know the feeling. The other night I saw a nice street shot that was lit with typical orange street lamps. I had my settings on AWB and took a shot. It was a little off so I decided to set the WB. Too cool, too hot, still too hot, still to hot, now too cool. Screw it, didn't want that shot that much to begin with.

[LSyd]

Originally Posted by Okayyou

I'm fine with AWB 90% of the time. I noticed cameras have a more difficult time in the dark, often the scene is too cool. I'll adjust the color in post if I fell the need to. I think setting the WB manually is more important for studio shots than on the street.

i usually only switch WB for night shots, from auto to fluorescent.

-

[vid]

I usually use cloudy, but sometimes I will take both a cloudy version and a sunny version to see which produces a better result.

I'm a big proponent of taking multiple versions of the same photo with different settings to get the result you want.

[bulliver]

Yeah, typically using Auto WB here, unless I can conclusively identify a certain type of lighting and correct for it. My blue hour shots are generally wide angle cityscapes that will have several different types of lighting that you cannot correct for. In these cases I use the WB slider in my raw editor, and just adjust it till it looks good to me.

For strobist work...the flashes are daylight balanced (5500K) to that is what I'll dial into the camera, though sometimes for mood I will use tungsten on the camera and put a CTO gel on the flash. Background will be blue, and subject will be neutral.

[Illithid Dude]

When it's sunny, I use daylight. Indoors, I use florescent or tungsten. At night, I use sunny or tungsten, depending on how many streetlights there are. I always thought that was normal. Is there a reason everyone uses cloudy rather then daylight?

[bulliver]

^ Just gives a 'warmth' to the shot that some prefer.

[photoLith]

I put mine on cloudy during the day, and at night, keep it on auto usually.

[initiald]

I tried making a photo during blue hour and setting the WB to tungsten.

[Surrealplaces]

I usually keep mine on cloudy/shady...only because I like the warmth. Where I find the white balance really makes a difference is indoor shots with fluorescent or incandescent lighting. I shoot in jpeg mode, so WB on the camera is important for me.

[diskojoe]

If you want to do it correctly you buy yourself a gray card and set a custom white balance or dial in the white balance yourself and adjust the tint. Its not hard to do if you pay attention to your ambient lighting and specifically the color of the light. A white piece of printer paper can make a cheap white card in a pinch.