White balance chat

[bobbarley]

This is awesome!

The Seat is nice but I think I'd have added some more light trails in PP to it.

How did you judge the white balance so well?

[DubFan]

This is awesome!

The Seat is nice but I think I'd have added some more light trails in PP to it.

How did you judge the white balance so well?

Custom white balance or white balance preset, or shoot in raw and adjust white balance in ACR.
I never use Auto white balance anymore for that reason.

[bobbarley]

Must make a note of learning about white balance more. It makes one of the biggest differences that I can see when doing night time shots (my favourite).

[thatwillis]

This is awesome!

The Seat is nice but I think I'd have added some more light trails in PP to it.

I would have liked there to be no light trails at all, but there where so many cars! Other photos the light trails seem to breakup the photo badly. As the cars where moving very slowly past.

How did you judge the white balance so well?

Becuase I'm so DAMN amazing.....  haa no it was luck it was on auto. But they where lovely white street lights not the horrible orange ones. I do also always shoot in RAW. So makes it easier to change in lightroom. I can never seem to get the preset white balance to work 

[DubFan]

Must make a note of learning about white balance more. It makes one of the biggest differences that I can see when doing night time shots (my favourite).

It also makes a huge different on inside shots. Your camera will have white balance presets like mine: sunlight, shade, cloudy, tungsten (normal bulbs), flourescent, flash, 4100k (not used this yet) and custom (where you take a photo of a something white in your setting to get the white level correct).
Pick which ever preset most suits the lighting of the scene. This will improve colours no end.

[shepgti]

white balance presets and all that jazz are such a waste of time, just shoot raw and you can have whatever balance you like!

loving the first shot (agree with ridg that a few more light trails would make it pop)

[DubFan]

white balance presets and all that jazz are such a waste of time, just shoot raw and you can have whatever balance you like!

Personally I'd rather have the white balance right in camera, even if shooting raw, because then all your shots will have the same white balance (if you do it in photoshop each shot will be slightly different) and also your preview on screen will have the right colour balance so you can tell if the shot worked or not.
I try to get the shot as close to what I want in camera (as you would with film) and then only do minimal editing later.
Certainly when shooting video, you do the white balance before shooting and then shoot a scene. It takes way too long to colour balance video footage to skip the white balance stage.

[Ridg]

white balance presets and all that jazz are such a waste of time, just shoot raw and you can have whatever balance you like!

Personally I'd rather have the white balance right in camera, even if shooting raw, because then all your shots will have the same white balance (if you do it in photoshop each shot will be slightly different) and also your preview on screen will have the right colour balance so you can tell if the shot worked or not.
I try to get the shot as close to what I want in camera (as you would with film) and then only do minimal editing later.
Certainly when shooting video, you do the white balance before shooting and then shoot a scene. It takes way too long to colour balance video footage to skip the white balance stage.

This

Having the correct or a close WB when shooting makes it so much easier to review your work and speeds up PP.

Although both photoshop (adobe camera raw) and Lightroom have a sync button that allows you to syncronise the white balance (as well as other settings) across a number of frames.  It's worth keeping in mind that unless you're shooting in a studio  or under fixed lighting the colour temperature is going to change.

[bobbarley]

So how does it work customising white balance when taking photos?  I have absolutely no idea.  I always stayed away from it because I thought it involved having to mess  around with a lot of complicated settings.

[Ridg]

So how does it work customising white balance when taking photos?  I have absolutely no idea.  I always stayed away from it because I thought it involved having to mess  around with a lot of complicated settings.

depends on your camera, on my Nikon (D300) it's as simple as select custom white balance, hold the white bance button till it flashes, take a photo of a reference card (white paper or neutral reference) camera flashes "good" job done.