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After reading a post about white balance on another forum I decided to obtain a means of manually setting the white balance for my shooting. I bought one of those white caps you stick over the lens for taking a wb reading and this is the results of the test I did yesterday. I shot these with my new Nikkor 50 1.4.

The shots were taken under natural light coming in through my office window which has a couple of green patterned panes, hence the green tinge. The 6x4 paper is white but the A4 paper is slightly cream in colour.

1) Camera wb setting Auto temp shot 4800
Camera manual temp for setting N/A



2) Camera wb setting Tungsten temp shot 3000
Camera manual temp for setting 3000



3) Camera wb setting Flouresent temp shot 4000
Camera manual temp for setting 4200



4)Camera wb setting Flash temp shot 5700
Camera manual temp for setting 5400



5)Camera wb setting Cloudy temp shot 5450
Camera manual temp for setting 6000



6)Camera wb setting Shade temp shot 6800
Camera manual temp for setting 8000



7)Camera wb setting Manual Pre Set temp shot 5100
Camera manual temp for setting



The results speak for themselves. It seems to be correct that shots can be improved by not letting the camera stay on auto white balance and I for one will be attempting to remember to set the wb before I start shooting in future.

One other thing I did notice is that the histogram on the manual set wb shot seemed to be more evenly spread than the other shots. But there is a purple tinge in the darker areas in the top rh corner and bottom lh corner. The same tinge appears along the paper edge where the top photo lays across the second photo. You can only see that in the full res shot[img]here[/img].

Hope this little test is of some use to others.

which shot did you use the white cap in preset mode, as all your notes refer to manual temp setting?

Oz

The preset mode was used for the last shot #7.

The first temp described is the one at which the camera recorded the shot.
The second temp setting is what the d70s manual states for that wb mode.
Actual temp shot for each mode differs significantly from what the table in the manual (page 48) states for each mode.

The significant thing for me is the amazing, to me, difference that manually setting the wb makes to the rendering of the colours in the shot.

Great work mate, good to see some visuals on what different methods do..

Must be WB week!

I just bought a card for using with my kit - http://secure.netsolhost.com/664583.677720/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CI&Product_Code=DGC-100&Category_Code=GC

US$16.75 delivered - worth a shot, I reckon.

I use Kodak R-27M Mini grey card from Vanbar at $4.40 each. Not too many excuses not to have a couple and use them whenever possible.

D70 (don't know about the D70s) has iffy auto WB on a good day.

Cheers