Color Temp Setting

[andyz]

I guess this is one of those things I didn't change because I didn't understand it well, and I never went back. My 30D has the Color Temp set to 5200. I recently bought a used 5D which is set at 6800.

Now I often want my shots a little warmer than I was getting them, but I handled that in post on a case by case basis. I haven't gone out and compared the two with shots at the different settings, but it made me wonder,
- where is your color temp setting,
- do you change it with conditions, or
- leave it at the cameras default or your own default?

Does the color temp matter in RAW?

[Riff Raff]

In matters in RAW in that it's easier to do white balance adjustments on just a few photos rather than all of them. And it matters in that if you want the camera to take an educated guess at the white balance, then you'll need to have it do that at the time of the shot. At any rate, what I generally do:

- Auto white balance for anything outdoors. I'm generally happy with how the 40D handles these situations on its own.

- Custom white balance set to 3200K for the specific type of indoor theatre shooting I'm usually doing each weekend (I have the C1/C2/C3 custom modes all set to this white balance). In these situations a tungsten spotlight is used for illumination and I'm also now using a 3/4 CTO filter on my flash. As it happens, the color temperature used for motion picture film (which appears frequently in the background) is also 3200K. So everything seems to balance pretty well now.

- For other types of indoor shooting, I'll usually set the white balance manually to Incandescent or Fluorescent as needed. I've never liked how auto white balance comes out indoors. It seems to get it wrong more often than not, and moreover it seems to vary randomly between shots.

[d2creative]

I have another wb question that might make sense to add in to this thread...

How come sometimes when i open my raw files in lightroom or aperture, a wb temp of 5k on one file is completely different than a wb temp of 5k on another file? Like with an image taken indoors and an image taken outdoors, both set to auto wb on the camera.

[TXhummer2]

Possibly because the EXIF tells the software the "tint" as well.

[d2creative]

The tint would be the same in both pics too.

I would just think that if you are taking a shot in raw, the color temp in the raw processing software should be equal no matter what light you took it in but I guess not.
One shot taken in full sun that comes in with a reading of 5k looks completely different than a shot taken under flourescent light that also comes in with a reading of 5k.
Or actually, what really happens is that they import at two totally different color temps. But if I try to make them both 5k or 6k or whatever, they look completely different from each other. So i just have to do it by eye.

[ElanR]

You guys are mixing up the camera setting with the scene lighting.

- If your scene is lighted with 3000k (tungsten) and you set the camera W/B to 5000k, your image will come out very warm.
- If your scene is lighted with 5000k (daylight) and you set the camera W/B to 5000k, your image will come out just right.
- If your scene is lighted with 7000k (bright shade) and you set the camera W/B to 5000k, your image will come out somewhat cold.

The camera doesn't set the scene color temperature. It does allow you to adjust the W/B color temperature to match that of the scene. Unless you have a good understanding of the Kelvin scale of color temperature and how it relates to everyday lighting conditions, it's better to use some other method of white balance adjustment.

[TXhummer2]

Note the "Relative Intensity" over "Wavelength" graph on this site:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...te-balance.htm