White balance in mixed lighting?

Forums Forums Get Technical Farktography tech talk White balance in mixed lighting?

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #1524
    orionid
    Participant

    Does anyone have any advice for white balance with mixed lighting? Right now my gut instict is to try multiple settings and just go with what looks good. Here’s an example of what makes me ask this from my recent NYC trip.

    The scene is a recessed “snowglobe” scene with incandescant lights above to either side and a flourescent backlight.


    This shot was taken with my whitebalance set to incandescent.


    While this one was taken with whitebalance set to flourescent.

    Personally I like the one set for incandescent better because of the cooler tones across the image, but the one set for flourescent is truer to what was visible in person. Any technical advice would be greatly appriciated.

    #20864
    SilverStag
    Participant

    I’d shoot raw, and then play with in-between settings in Photoshop Camera Raw until I liked what I saw. Of your examples, I like the incandescent one better.

    #20865
    nutkick_42
    Participant

    I just set my white balance using a receipt, envelope, piece of paper, etc. I hardly ever bother with the pre-set white balance modes.

    #20866
    soosh
    Participant

    I never think about white balance until post-processing. I shoot RAW and use Canon’s DPP software most of the time to convert. Under White Balance, there is a color temperature slider there that is just awesome to use.

    #20867
    nobigdeal
    Participant

    I use RAW and adjust WB after also but if I am using a P&S the only shoots JPEGS then I have to think about WB.

    In that case I do what nutkick said although I have a gray card.

    #20868
    orionid
    Participant

    I’d shoot raw,

    I shoot RAW

    I use RAW

    Now, see, I keep telling myself I need to do that, but I like pressing the button on top of the camera alot and have a bad habit of filling up my 2 gig cards with jpg’s alone. This might convince me to start using RAW….. Plus maybe I’ll become more judicious about snapping the shot when filesize is a concern. Sort of like eons ago when I used that old filmy-type stuff and was paying for it on a high schooler’s salary.

    #20869
    nobigdeal
    Participant

    I’d shoot raw,

    I shoot RAW

    I use RAW

    Now, see, I keep telling myself I need to do that, but I like pressing the button on top of the camera alot and have a bad habit of filling up my 2 gig cards with jpg’s alone. This might convince me to start using RAW….. Plus maybe I’ll become more judicious about snapping the shot when filesize is a concern. Sort of like eons ago when I used that old filmy-type stuff and was paying for it on a high schooler’s salary.

    I have a couple 4 gig cards I bought at staples for $24.00 each. If you are not shooting massive bursts then you really don’t need the super duper lightning fast cards. Each 4 gig holds about 275 RAW files. If I shoot 550 shots I am being a bit too obsessed, but just in case I keep a couple 2 gigs and 1 gig cards in my pocket. LOL!

    Plus shooting RAW gives you more control to fix the not so perfect exposed shot that otherwise came out good.

    Be prepared for a lot more work in PP though.

    #20870
    jpatten
    Participant

    I do most of my shooting in RAW, then pick only the best shots to PP. It just takes time to tweak the color, sharpness, contrast etc to get everything to its best look. as such I have thousands of orphan raw shots on my drives… BUT i can go back and grab them if I ever need them

    #20871
    jpatten
    Participant

    Of course the other nice thing, in Raw I have recovered some shots I thought were just too bad to use

    #20872
    olavf
    Participant

    I’ve been shooting RAW + jpegs for a while. It’s probably time to kill the jpegs the camera takes – I never use them anyway :/

    Oh, and FWIW, the last ‘big’ wedding I went to, I took 300+ pictures. Generally I run around 75-100 for an average day out.

    #20873
    Choc-Ful-A
    Participant

    I’ve had my DSLR since June and after I found a good Linux tool for decoding RAW images I switched. Also, memory cards seem to drop in price every month, so the size is becoming less and less of a concern. When I got my camera, they were selling good 8G cards for $44.

    #20874
    linguine
    Participant

    I’ve had my DSLR since June and after I found a good Linux tool for decoding RAW images I switched. Also, memory cards seem to drop in price every month, so the size is becoming less and less of a concern. When I got my camera, they were selling good 8G cards for $44.

    What are you using for RAW images, I’ve been wanting to try shooting RAW instead of JPG but didn’t have any clue what to use in linux.

    #20875
    Elsinore
    Keymaster

    Dunno about Choc-Ful-A, but I use DCRaw for processing RAW under Linux/with GIMP. I also always shoot RAW (actually RAW +jpg at the large size–sometimes I like what the camera does with the image better than what I can do, and for snapshots, it’s especially easy/nice).

    #20876
    soosh
    Participant

    I’ve had my DSLR since June and after I found a good Linux tool for decoding RAW images I switched. Also, memory cards seem to drop in price every month, so the size is becoming less and less of a concern. When I got my camera, they were selling good 8G cards for $44.

    When I got mine, 2GB cards were $200.

    Costco often has really good deals on 4GB cards, which are generally what I use now.

    It’s really not that much of a problem for my night shots, as I’m lucky to get three shots an hour or so on some nights. Sometimes as many as six or ten an hour, if the moon is fairly bright..

    #20877
    linguine
    Participant

    Dunno about Choc-Ful-A, but I use DCRaw for processing RAW under Linux/with GIMP. I also always shoot RAW (actually RAW +jpg at the large size–sometimes I like what the camera does with the image better than what I can do, and for snapshots, it’s especially easy/nice).

    Already had that installed, I wonder when that happened. I guess its time to try and figure out how to use RAWs now.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 16 total)
  • The topic ‘White balance in mixed lighting?’ is closed to new replies.