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M9 White balance


shootinglulu

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Hi there guys!;)

 

I just bought a used M9 which has the worse case of horrid white balance correction I ever saw from a Leica. I think I'm correcting it ok in LR but my question is, is the sensor in this camera inferior to the others I've owned or is it just a worse White Balance issue?

Any wisdom gratefully received.Thankyou!

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Shootinglulu ... indoor with Leica is a bit of yellow sided contras but outdoor it works perfect. I use to set the white balance manually on Calvin. after few shoots you will have a good idea what number to set where and then its all like a walk in the park.

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The worst AWB was the original AWB of the M8 (that could hardly be called AWB at all). The AWB in the M9 works reasonably well. It wasn’t made for incandescent lighting, but then again, no AWB is.

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The worst AWB was the original AWB of the M8 (that could hardly be called AWB at all). The AWB in the M9 works reasonably well. It wasn’t made for incandescent lighting, but then again, no AWB is.

 

Do you mean, per chance, flourescent and not incandescent?

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I just bought a used M9……

…...is the sensor in this camera inferior to the others I've owned

 

Maybe not the sensor, but the cover glass is another story. Brave soul to pick up an M9 these days.

 

More to your point, what settings are you using to start? Have you tried a white bal card, ColorChecker Passport, or the like?

 

Jeff

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Maybe not the sensor, but the cover glass is another story. Brave soul to pick up an M9 these days.

 

More to your point, what settings are you using to start? Have you tried a white bal card, ColorChecker Passport, or the like?

 

Jeff

Maybe I should try a whitebal card but really I'm just wondering if the issue indicates a faulty sensor as no other M9 had this blue WB problem.

Thankyou.

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Do you mean, per chance, flourescent and not incandescent?

Fluorescent lighting opens its own can of worms … The thing with incandescent lighting is just that it is usually and deliberately excluded from the range of colour temperatures that are fully corrected by the AWB – that range usually starts at 4000 K or thereabouts. Both tungsten and halogen lighting have colour temperatures well below that limit.

 

(Years ago when I was in the business of testing cameras of all makes I originally started checking AWB performance with daylight and incandescent lighting, but soon gave up on the latter as no AWB was up to the task and was, as camera vendors assured me, never designed for this to begin with.)

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Fluorescent lighting opens its own can of worms … The thing with incandescent lighting is just that it is usually and deliberately excluded from the range of colour temperatures that are fully corrected by the AWB – that range usually starts at 4000 K or thereabouts. Both tungsten and halogen lighting have colour temperatures well below that limit.

 

(Years ago when I was in the business of testing cameras of all makes I originally started checking AWB performance with daylight and incandescent lighting, but soon gave up on the latter as no AWB was up to the task and was, as camera vendors assured me, never designed for this to begin with.)

 

I have more trouble with fluorescent than I ever did with good old light bulbs.

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shootinglulu, I regard AWB merely as a starting point. I always capture Raw files. Often in average outdoors conditions colour rendering is surprisingly good. Indoors is a different matter. If I have any doubts about colour rendering, I always shoot a Pantone ColorChecker or Grey Card to aid correction in Lightroom. Very occasionally I will tweak the result to meet my recollection or preference for final colour rendering.

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Maybe I should try a whitebal card but really I'm just wondering if the issue indicates a faulty sensor as no other M9 had this blue WB problem.

Thankyou.

 

Seeing is believing (and I trust you're actually shooting in daylight)….seems like a call to Service is in order.

 

Jeff

Edited by Jeff S
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  • 3 weeks later...
I'd try resetting all to default

 

Mine is fine as is in daylight only, but I shoot in raw and adjust everything in post anyway - so don't care

 

As see those settings as ballpark for the rear screen - have nothing to do with an eventual print

 

This is what I've been thinking...adj. white balance can be done in LR so does it really matter if using raw files?

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This is what I've been thinking...adj. white balance can be done in LR so does it really matter if using raw files?

I believe it does matter. When you capture jpeg files, the camera has made a decision for you. Data is thrown away during file compression. So changes subsequently in LR can only be made to data left after compression in the camera. It is a 'no-win' situation.

 

Sometimes beneficial changes can be made in LR; but only when working with Raw files do you have the best chance of getting an accurate or acceptable results. That is my understanding.

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I believe it does matter. When you capture jpeg files, the camera has made a decision for you. Data is thrown away during file compression. So changes subsequently in LR can only be made to data left after compression in the camera. It is a 'no-win' situation.

 

Sometimes beneficial changes can be made in LR; but only when working with Raw files do you have the best chance of getting an accurate or acceptable results. That is my understanding.

 

I see, so shooting jpegs WB matters, while shooting raw WB can be adj. in LR? This makes sense.

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Being lazy by nature, I prefer to have a decent starting point in a raw workflow as well. Life is too short to be spent twiddling eyedroppers and sliders. Shoot a grey card from time to time, it saves a whole lot of computer time. In general I find AWB on the M9 pretty good. However modern LED lighting and fluorescent are awful and tungsten too yellow, as these are on most digital cameras. The grey card feature on the M240 takes care of this and is a reason to upgrade by itself if one shoots in the evening often.

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I see, so shooting jpegs WB matters, while shooting raw WB can be adj. in LR? This makes sense.

Although that does not rule trying to get an appropriate WB during initial exposure. I invariably use a calibrated grey card at that time, then use the grey patch for telling LR how it was. That gives a purer starting point in PP which you can fine-tune to suit your personal preferences.

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