Custom white balance

[rebardwg]

I think i've confused myself even more than ever.

does it make any sense to do a custom white balance off a gray card when shooting at a bar or club where the light is different from one end of the room to the other? For example, at the bar, there are red lights that light up the shelves of liquor. In the corner of the bar, there's just an amber colored light on the wall. At the door, there's blue neon coming in from outside.

I want to find a way to fight off the washed out look on the skin tones as I'm shooting with flash at TTL -1.0, iso 1250, f2.8, 1/13 on a D700.

1) I was thinking of using a warming card to set my WB so the shots are automatically warmer. But with changing light conditions, i'm not sure that would work in all these lighting situations.

2) Or do you think I should add a 1/8 warming gel on my flash, maybe even a bronze or gold gel to warm up the skin just a bit?

I think #2 makes more sense b/c the gel wont really affect the background ambient

***let me just add this note, the pictures are not blown out or overexposed, the flash is just unflattering b/c its a flat white, kinda gray and washed out looking. We're aiming for a golden color, bronze or tan. Am i just asking for too much? =)

[kenw]

I would rather do any warming or whatever in post so that i could control it better.

[rebardwg]

Kenw, that's what I've been doing but I want to spend less time in post. Lightroom's auto sync feature is a gift from heaven... but we want to get it right while shooting and not have to fix it later.

[CaptainTom]

Are you letting the camera choose the white balance? AWB on a Canon.
Bad Idea under difficult lighting situations. Choose one of the preset balances or set in a Kelvin number that you think is close.

Then, whenever the scene changes to a different lighting setup, shoot a quick white or gray card and go on with your shooting.
In Photoshop you'll then be able to balance the color using the white or gray card in the first shot. You can do this with AWB but I've gotten better results with a fixed WB setting. In mixed color light, you are always going to have some colored shadows and highlights that in order to be perfect would have to be individually worked on in Post.

[bondarnes]

I think idea # 2 is the best in this situation since most of the lighting is tungsten. Set your WB to tungsten and add a 1/2 CTO gel to your flash. That should warm the flash up and balance better with the available. If you feel you want it even warmer try a 3/4 or full CTO.

[CaptainTom]

Originally Posted by bondarnes

I think idea # 2 is the best in this situation since most of the lighting is tungsten. Set your WB to tungsten and add a 1/2 CTO gel to your flash. That should warm the flash up and balance better with the available. If you feel you want it even warmer try a 3/4 or full CTO.

And here I thought you slept through the last FWPPA lecture !!!

[srwatters]

I use a white card for white balance and a gray card for exposure.

Of course I shoot RAW and make up my one version of reality when I process...

[hieuu@comcast.net]

Expo disc

I use expo disc to set white balance, works great and you can have them customize the disc for different situations

[kenw]

Originally Posted by srwatters

I use a white card for white balance and a gray card for exposure.

Of course I shoot RAW and make up my one version of reality when I process...

technically the grey card can be used for both, white blance is simply R=G=B, and any shade of grey, or black or white qualifies as R=G=B.

It's tough to work with a black card of course. White can be tricky but obviously it works. 18% simply works for both equally well, so it's why most use it for both.

But I prefer to use a preset if at all possible and then as you say, create my own reality later......

[srwatters]

Using a gray card can be a good solution, but I find in the studio the gray card tends to give me a warmer WB result with my Nikon D3. I have a two sided (white/18%gray) Lastolite target and when comparing custom WB numbers, the white side yields more natural and true to life results. YMMV.

[ergonzalez]

I am not too clear on the white, grey, and black situation.... Why and when should I use the grey paper/card to set the custom white balance? Why and when should I use the white paper/card?

They sell kits to set the custom white balance and on the product pictures, the shade of grey cards varies from one manufacturer to the other. What is so special about the grey color in these kits? Can I just paint a piece of cardboard with grey spray paint and use that instead?

[kenw]

Edgar, use a white card for white balance, a grey card (18% grey specifically) for exposure. This will be your best best for almost all situations.

The idea of using a grey card for white balance is more for convenience, due to the fact that some folks seemingly cannot get good enough results using a white card (for WB) blowing out the white and introducing all sorts of funkiness (and weird colors via chromic aberation, etc).

However, I'm no genius and I've never had any difficulty using a white card for white balance. In a pinch I've also used a white styrofoam cup from the ditch, my t-shirt or anything else handy that was "white-enough" and available. In fact, it was my preferred way on my 1st digital, a Nikon Coolpix 950 as I found the preset WB values a bit off. Since moving to the more modern dSLRs, I find the presets more accurate as well as simpler.

For the 18% grey card, they're too cheap to bother with a DYI. Any decent camera shop will have them for a few bucks. I've seen them as freebies, and once as the backside of a business card...the WWW is full of them. As far as why 18%, your camera meter is carefully tuned to look for 18% specifically. much darker and it will overexpose, too light and it will consistently underexpose every shot.

hope this helps.

[PeteQ]

Don is right on, no surprise there....

If you are mixing flash with tungsten ambient then you are going to need to gel your flash to match your ambient light source to get the best results. Tungsten is a much different color temperature than your flash and unless you get them both close you will have a hard time getting an accurate rendition of the scene. Once your flash and the key ambient lighting are close in color temperature you can make your minor adjustments either via the kelvin adjustment on your camera or later in post.

Using a gray card alone will give you better color than not using anything but it takes only a few seconds to put the correct gel on and it will save much time down the road. I keep in my bag a set of gels I cut for just these occasions. I have a variety of colors that I have cut myself from full sheets of material like this. You can get a whole bunch of speedlite sized gels from one sheet so I prefer these to a small pre-made pack but those are out there too.

[ergonzalez]

I've read other postings that suggest to shoot a grey card at 1/60 to setup the custom white balance. should I change the other settings such as ISO speed and and f stops to have the picture of the grey card properly exposed? or, should I just set the shutter speed at 1/60 and keep the ISO and f stops at the levels that i would usually shoot inside a particular basketball gym?

[rbalcom]

Edgar,

If you are actually setting a custom white balance in your 50D, the best way is to follow Canon's instructions on page 72 of your 50D Instruction Manual. It specifically states to use a white object or card.

If you are adding a reference to an image for setting the white balance in Camera Raw or Lightroom using the Custom White Balance tool, Adobe states:

In simple terms, adjusting the white balance is a matter of identifying what objects in the image should be neutral-colored (white or gray) and then adjusting the colors in the image to make those objects neutral-colored. A white or gray object in a scene takes on the color cast by the ambient light or flash used to shoot the picture. When you use the White Balance tool to specify an object that should be white or gray, Camera Raw can determine the color of the light in which the scene was shot and then adjust for scene lighting automatically.

Based on that, either would do. Hope this helps to clear it up for you.