Author Topic: How To: Custom White Balance (Or shoot cars in carparks under orange lights!)  (Read 27635 times)

Offline Ridg

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Hey I've been trying to setup my d3000 but it just tells me it can't get the settings any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Cheers

what to you mean by setup?

on the camera it's menu > shooting menu > white balance

page 80

http://www.nikonusa.com/pdf/manuals/noprint/D3000_ENnoprint.pdf

if you're using camera raw (on RAW or JPEG) then you might be sellecting an area that's too bright, for cars I normally use the registration plate (front) or white road markings (i in camera raw selections the white balance tool).

Offline thatwillis

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As in set the white balance to the lighting situation. I read through the how to in the manual. I stood under a orange street light. Set manual to appropriate settings (using the gauge on the display) went though the procedure to set up. Put a piece of white paper in front of the camera when it was under the orange street light. Took pictures. Error comes up telling me it could not acquire settings.  :sad:

Should i be setting it to a short shutter speed or long ?

Chances are I'm getting something wrong somewhere still pretty new to this.

Thanks for your help  :smiley:

Offline Ridg

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As in set the white balance to the lighting situation. I read through the how to in the manual. I stood under a orange street light. Set manual to appropriate settings (using the gauge on the display) went though the procedure to set up. Put a piece of white paper in front of the camera when it was under the orange street light. Took pictures. Error comes up telling me it could not acquire settings.  :sad:

Should i be setting it to a short shutter speed or long ?

Chances are I'm getting something wrong somewhere still pretty new to this.

Thanks for your help  :smiley:

your shutter speed needs to be one that exposes the white paper correctly e.g. the exposure meter should be at 0 / in P, A or S mode you have no exposure compensation dialled in

Personally I'd use one of the presets and then adjust the image in camera raw.

Offline shepgti

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As in set the white balance to the lighting situation. I read through the how to in the manual. I stood under a orange street light. Set manual to appropriate settings (using the gauge on the display) went though the procedure to set up. Put a piece of white paper in front of the camera when it was under the orange street light. Took pictures. Error comes up telling me it could not acquire settings.  :sad:

Should i be setting it to a short shutter speed or long ?

Chances are I'm getting something wrong somewhere still pretty new to this.

Thanks for your help  :smiley:

your shutter speed needs to be one that exposes the white paper correctly e.g. the exposure meter should be at 0 / in P, A or S mode you have no exposure compensation dialled in

Personally I'd use one of the presets and then adjust the image in camera raw.

agreed, so easy to post process the white balance. failing that i would just use a cooler colour temp in the white balance settings

Offline thatwillis

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Yeah I'll edit them in camera in RAW. My laptop isnt that great and gets very upset when i try and edit RAW pictures on it being 2/3 times the size of Jpegs.

your shutter speed needs to be one that exposes the white paper correctly e.g. the exposure meter should be at 0 / in P, A or S mode you have no exposure compensation dialled in

I made sure the meter was set to 0. Would it be better to use P,A, or S to setup then?

Cheers
James

Offline T_J_G

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« Last Edit: 24 April 2011, 19:29 by T_J_G »

Offline bored_Welsh_lad

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It's been a long time since I have played with a camera but from what I remember doesn't a camera try to produce a correctly exposed image to 18% grey.. so I had a little google and came up with this...

Quote
First, white balance will remove any color cast. It does not correct for underexposure. You can use a white or gray target to set the custom WB, as long as it is a neutral color (ie, equal parts of R,G,B so no cast whatsoever.) If shooting flash, yes, use flash to set custom WB. Instruction book says to have card completely cover center ring in viewfinder. I try to get even more coverage. It needs to be properly exposed. If gray card, histogram should be vertical group in center. If white card, vertical grouping toward the right. In no event should the histogram grouping be vertical in the left half.

I don't know how many people on here use histograms to check their exposure but HERE is a good place to learn about them...

I think it's very good to learn about custom white balances as you can see from THIS link it makes hell of a difference....


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Offline Diamond Hell

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Error comes up telling me it could not acquire settings.  :sad:

Should i be setting it to a short shutter speed or long ?

What 'mode' are you using for this?

Although I'm a Canon user, so I can only speak from Canon-based experience IIRC you can only set the custom white balance when you're in one of the 'creative zone' modes, not the auto/sports/numpty preset modes.

Nikon might not be like that, but it's worth checking.
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