White balance question, opinions requested

[anorcross]

I was in the Houston Arboretum yesterday late afternoon, wandering aimlessly around the trails (they'd run out of trail maps), looking for photo opportunities. The day was mostly sunny, but the trees obscured most of the late afternoon sun, so the lighting was a mix of mostly shade with some patches of sun. I had my 20D set to auto white balance, and was shooting in RAW. When I processed some of the shots, I first used the 'as shot' setting in ACR. These came out rather too blue, so I experimented with both daylight and shade settings. Here are a couple of shots processed three ways, first 'as shot' (the camera's AWB setting), then ACR's 'daylight' setting (which is different from the camera's-- the 20D uses 5200K for daylight, ACR uses 5500), finally ACR's 'shade' setting (again different from the 20D, ACR uses 7500K, the 20D 7000K). Unfortunately, I couldn't find any suitable white or grey portions of the pictures to do a custom WB (I know I should have done one at the scene). Opinions?

[Clint_Smith]

that is mixed lighting...you are gonna have a hard time getting a consitant color on one file...if you processed it twice with different color settings on each process, then you can PS the heck out of them....

The biggest thing is that it is hard as heck to process for the highlights and get the foreground colors without having some sorta fill flash or reflector or something to bring out the saturation...

I dont think it is a WB issue as much an exposure. A neutral density filter will help in situations like this. It "slows"down the light coming through the lens....so you can get the bright sky to be blue, but the longer exposure allows the foreground colors to come though....

[anorcross]

Originally Posted by Clint_Smith

that is mixed lighting...you are gonna have a hard time getting a consitant color on one file...if you processed it twice with different color settings on each process, then you can PS the heck out of them....

The biggest thing is that it is hard as heck to process for the highlights and get the foreground colors without having some sorta fill flash or reflector or something to bring out the saturation...

I dont think it is a WB issue as much an exposure. A neutral density filter will help in situations like this. It "slows"down the light coming through the lens....so you can get the bright sky to be blue, but the longer exposure allows the foreground colors to come though....

Are you talking about a graduated neutral density filter, so I could have less light in the top half of the frame? A normal neutral density filter would simply cut down on the light across the frame, which would have the same effect as just giving the shot less exposure. Or am I missing something about how neutral density filters work? I agree that the lighting in these shots is tricky. I could try some digital blending from multiple RAW developments. I've done that before with shots with much better defined skylines. It would be a lot of work for these shots, though. I was mostly looking for opinions on which white balance settings produced the most pleasing results. I think the 'as shot' settings are much too cool.

[engstrom]

Originally Posted by anorcross

Are you talking about a graduated neutral density filter, so I could have less light in the top half of the frame? A normal neutral density filter would simply cut down on the light across the frame, which would have the same effect as just giving the shot less exposure. Or am I missing something about how neutral density filters work?

Yeah, I believe Clint was talking about a graduated ND filter. And no, you're not missing anything about how ND filters work.

As to my preference, it's probably somewhere between the As Shot and the Daylight settings, probably closer to As Shot because I tend to like things on the cool side for landscape pics. Then again that's just a personal preference with me.

[Terrancelee]

Personally, I like the "shade" setting on the first batch. Just because I like the warmth in the sunlight, as I'm looking down that path of leaves. However, I like the opposite on the last set, I think the "as shot" one is better, bringing out the water as a cleaner look.

Course, just my personal opinions.

[PeteQ]

That's the beauty of RAW, being able to adjust without losing anything. I guess for me the question really is.... Which one do you like best? That's your winnner!

Two ways to go here... How did the scene look when you shot it? Adjust WB so it is closest to that. OR

How do you want the scene to look? Do you like warmer (it seems so) colors? A lot of folk ajust their WB to warmer, especially when shooing people so the skin has that warm glow.

You can still do a custom WB in Photoshop using curves and by picking your black point, white point and gray point directly from the scene as to which you think each should be.

[rab3rd]

Take the shot that you like the best. Expose it for the highlights and open it in PS. then do the same one again only expose it for the shadows, open that one in PS and merge them together. I think you should be able to pull everything out that you want that way.

[anorcross]

Thanks for the feedback. I think I prefer the daylight version of each. I've been playing with Adobe's new Lightroom today. It's very impressive. The RAW converter is a definite step up over ACR, with everything from ACR plus a much better curves control. I used it to process this version of one of them. It's about as much detail as I can get out of the highlights. Some of them are blown way beyond the capacity of any RAW developer to retrieve. But I quite like this version:

[mattchow]

I don't know if it is just my computer or what, but why do these pictures look so low quality. They dont look like they came from a 20D at all, lifeless color and heavily pixelated.

what processing are you doing? what lens? what settings?

you have nice glass and a great camera so i am now wondering where the photos start to lose their quality.

[anorcross]

Originally Posted by mattchow

I don't know if it is just my computer or what, but why do these pictures look so low quality. They dont look like they came from a 20D at all, lifeless color and heavily pixelated.

what processing are you doing? what lens? what settings?

you have nice glass and a great camera so i am now wondering where the photos start to lose their quality.

Well they are reduced in size to 800 pixels on the long side, and compressed at level 5 in Photoshop, but they look fine on my iMac and my iBook. What monitor are you using?
They were processed in ACR (except the last which was processed in Lightroom, which is ACR plus), then all I did was some very light lab sharpening after downsizing. Normally I would appply a Provia action, but this was a test of white balance. The lens was the 17-40L, they were shot at ISO 400, the vertical one was 1/60 at F6.3, the horizontal 1/40 at F7.1. I'm not seeing the pixelation at all. Could you look again? Perhaps Smugmug was doing something funny when you viewed them?

[Patti Edens]

Just fyi, I don't see any pixelation on my ancient Trinitron Ultratron P780 CRT. They look just fine to me.

Patti

[engstrom]

Originally Posted by anorcross

Well they are reduced in size to 800 pixels on the long side, and compressed at level 5 in Photoshop, but they look fine on my iMac and my iBook.

I don't notice any pixelation but I do notice some JPEG artifacts - especially in the trees to the left of the 2nd picture. I believe that is do to saving them at level 5. If you have a chance could you try saving one of them at level 10 and posting it so we can see the difference? Thanks.

[anorcross]

Here's one saved at level 10. I usually go for level 5 or 6 to keep the file size down.

[mattchow]

now that im on my home computer, the picture at level 10 looks better, but there is still no real definition of the tree's and the water seems a bit bland. the whole scene just seems really flat to me.

[anorcross]

Originally Posted by mattchow

now that im on my home computer, the picture at level 10 looks better, but there is still no real definition of the tree's and the water seems a bit bland. the whole scene just seems really flat to me.

That's very puzzling. It looks fine on my computers, plenty of definition in the trees. What monitor are you using, and what web browser?
Try viewing them at my Smugmug site:
http://anorcross.smugmug.com/gallery/1111114