White Balance Question

[W00DY]

Hi All,

I was playing around a little with some images tonight to try and learn Nikon Capture Editor more. Anyway I had this image:

Original



The camera's white balance was set to flash when I took this image. I then changed the White Balance setting to Flash in Capture and the image came out like this:



As you can see the second one has much better colour (less yellow).

So this leads me to ask, is it really neccesary to worry about White Balance in camera at all? It seems like the WB in camera and then the WB in Capture are different?

Open to disscusion.

Cheers,

W00DY

[birddog114]

If you shoot NEF, then not to worry about WB much, it can be fixed or done thru NC, With Jpeg is less chance in NC and you have to guess the WB.

[W00DY]

If yous hoot NEF, then not to worry about WB much, it can be fixed done thru NC, With Jpeg is less chance in NC and you have to guess the WB.

Yeah that is what I have been thinking. If I don't need to think about White Balance seeting then I can consentrate on other things.

I was surprised to see the difference though, I thought setting the WB setting on the camera would have been the same as Capture....

W00DY

[birddog114]

If yous hoot NEF, then not to worry about WB much, it can be fixed done thru NC, With Jpeg is less chance in NC and you have to guess the WB.

Yeah that is what I have been thinking. If I don't need to think about White Balance seeting then I can consentrate on other things.

I was surprised to see the difference though, I thought setting the WB setting on the camera would have been the same as Capture....

W00DY

Shooting NEF, I normally leave it as Auto in WB, but sometimes I do use the Expodisc or Pringle cap to play in preset WB.

[Onyx]

I prefer the first shot actually, the NC flash setting is slightly cool for my tastes.

Edit: may be related to this issue -
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=11770393

[sirhc55]

I would tend to agree with Onyx on this one Woody. The saturation is certainly better in the first shot.

I am only guessing now but I would assume that the algorithms of the second shot were competing with the first WB thereby giving a double dose - so as to speak. Does that make sense?

Chris

[AlistairF]

W00DY, Do a test in the same fashion, but photograph an 18% grey card or other neutral object. Then measure the RGB values off each object to see the difference. I've also noticed that NC does give slightly different readings when setting white balance through the grey point to that of setting it using PRE in the camera.

It tells me that NC must use differing colour temperature values to that of the D70.

Alistair

[gstark]

Woody,

What's your in-camera WB setting?

Do you have adjustment (-1, -2) dialled in on the camera? My guess is that you might, and that would explain the slightly different result.

Like Onyx, I prefer the slightly more saturated version, but the beauty of NC is that you can put the image back, or do just about anything else you want to it without doing any damage to the image file.

[ajo43]

as onyx says there is a long thread on this issue(fault) on DP. I'm in the process of writing a thread about wb which I'll post later today.

At this stage from my tests it appears that the flash setting and cloudy setting in camera may be swapped in a programming error.

[W00DY]

Woody,

What's your in-camera WB setting?

Do you have adjustment (-1, -2) dialled in on the camera? My guess is that you might, and that would explain the slightly different result.

Like Onyx, I prefer the slightly more saturated version, but the beauty of NC is that you can put the image back, or do just about anything else you want to it without doing any damage to the image file.

I don't think I have +2 or -2 dialed in but can't be certain.

The second image is certainly closer to the correct colours though. the first seems to have to much yellow in it, especially over the rock and grass.

Anyway As you said this is why we shootin RAW

W00DY

[Matt. K]

Woody
It might be that your monitor is a bit off...and that's why you see a better image after the adjusment.