jonoslack
Active member
Hi There
This post is just to establish my situation as a nutter in irrevocable terms!
Some may have been amused / bored / irritated by the discussion on this in the Thanks to Rob thread.
Rob - if you're reading this, thank you again.
I have a distinct feeling that I wasn't making myself clear - hopefully these samples will help - I should note that I'm not writing off AWB in all situations, but I think it's unhelpful for landscape.
In each case the left hand shot has been taken with 'daylight' WB (4891K -5 tint). The right hand shot has been taken with AWB - I've noted the wb for each below:
Daylight Left, AWB: 6414 tint 4
Daylight Left, AWB: 6372 tint 2
Daylight Left, AWB: 6026 tint 3
Daylight Left, AWB: 6105 tint 1
Daylight Left, AWB: 4181 tint 4
Daylight Left, AWB: 4199 tint 3
Daylight Left, AWB: 4254 tint 7
In the 38 pairs of shots I took, the AWB went from:
4075 - 6428, the tint from -22 to +16 - (n.b. the fact that the AWB seems to be getting cooler as time goes on is misleading - the spread was actually fairly evenly diverse)
In almost every case the 'daylight' gave a more realistic representation of the scene, and in the first couple of shots the AWB has the nasty yellow cast which I had hated so much with Nikon.
So, to my point.
1. There may be no 'correct' White balance in situations like this, but if you use AWB, then your colour balance is going to slew considerably from hot to cold - if you process the pictures 1/2 hour after taking them, then this is obvious, if you process them 3 days later you're unlikely to remember exactly what the colour was like anyway.
2. Fixing a white balance (in this case daylight) is, as Rob put in his revelatory message, is like using slide film - you KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO GET, and you can understand the results. You also have a sensible starting point from which to work. Of course, you could take a grey card reading when you start and use that . . . but it'll change from shoot to shoot, and it's still only going to be arbitrary (incidentally, I took a grey card and the dog urinated on it before the first shot!).
3. The AWB on the Nikon is prone to give too warm results with a yellow cast in evening light (you might feel that's my opinion).
Sorry if this just seems like Slack banging his greens drum again!
We all learn about white balance, we develop procedures to use it, but I think most people really haven't thought about the situation in mixed outdoor lighting - and I've seen very little written about it, the common mantras about grey cards and macbeth chards come up - and they really don't meet the case!
If this has made one person think a little, then it's been worthwhile!
This post is just to establish my situation as a nutter in irrevocable terms!
Some may have been amused / bored / irritated by the discussion on this in the Thanks to Rob thread.
Rob - if you're reading this, thank you again.
I have a distinct feeling that I wasn't making myself clear - hopefully these samples will help - I should note that I'm not writing off AWB in all situations, but I think it's unhelpful for landscape.
In each case the left hand shot has been taken with 'daylight' WB (4891K -5 tint). The right hand shot has been taken with AWB - I've noted the wb for each below:
Daylight Left, AWB: 6414 tint 4
Daylight Left, AWB: 6372 tint 2
Daylight Left, AWB: 6026 tint 3
Daylight Left, AWB: 6105 tint 1
Daylight Left, AWB: 4181 tint 4
Daylight Left, AWB: 4199 tint 3
Daylight Left, AWB: 4254 tint 7
In the 38 pairs of shots I took, the AWB went from:
4075 - 6428, the tint from -22 to +16 - (n.b. the fact that the AWB seems to be getting cooler as time goes on is misleading - the spread was actually fairly evenly diverse)
In almost every case the 'daylight' gave a more realistic representation of the scene, and in the first couple of shots the AWB has the nasty yellow cast which I had hated so much with Nikon.
So, to my point.
1. There may be no 'correct' White balance in situations like this, but if you use AWB, then your colour balance is going to slew considerably from hot to cold - if you process the pictures 1/2 hour after taking them, then this is obvious, if you process them 3 days later you're unlikely to remember exactly what the colour was like anyway.
2. Fixing a white balance (in this case daylight) is, as Rob put in his revelatory message, is like using slide film - you KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO GET, and you can understand the results. You also have a sensible starting point from which to work. Of course, you could take a grey card reading when you start and use that . . . but it'll change from shoot to shoot, and it's still only going to be arbitrary (incidentally, I took a grey card and the dog urinated on it before the first shot!).
3. The AWB on the Nikon is prone to give too warm results with a yellow cast in evening light (you might feel that's my opinion).
Sorry if this just seems like Slack banging his greens drum again!
We all learn about white balance, we develop procedures to use it, but I think most people really haven't thought about the situation in mixed outdoor lighting - and I've seen very little written about it, the common mantras about grey cards and macbeth chards come up - and they really don't meet the case!
If this has made one person think a little, then it's been worthwhile!