M8 - Auto White Balance

[sprice]

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I apologize in advance if this topic has been discussed, but . . . I just received my M8 and have been using it with Auto White Balance. In a word, it is terrible when used inside; not even close to the correct white balance. Has anyone else had this problem and is there a cure?

[bradreiman]

hi scott-awb has so far been a real dissapointment indoors. are you using ir cut filters? hopefully subsequent firmware releases will sort the awb, although without ir filters you will get very few good indoor-mixed lighting shots....b

[sprice]

Thanks for the heads up. No ir filters yet; I guess I will wait like everyone else.

[blakley]

I've got the filters, and upgraded to firmware 1.09. AWB is still horrific. I just stopped using it. I set it manually in degrees K or set a custom WB with a white or grey reference. It's a small pain, but the results are infinitely better.

[Bill Sievers]

Get an Expodisc for manual adjustment. I agree, the AWB is terrible in artificial lighting. If you are worried about skin tone use the Expodisc.

[larry]

I've also found the AWB to be inaccurate and inconsistent. But in fairness, it's really not that much worse than most other digital cameras. It's best to use one of the presets, or even better to set the Kelvin temperature directly. After all, the M8 isn't a P&S, so why try to operate it like one?

 

Larry

[colorflow]

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I am also having trouble with setting WB. This is the first time I've used digital processing. What's an Expodisc? and would someone please give a quick lesson on how to set WB with Kelvin and tint adjustment in C1?

 

Thanks,

Alan

[johnkuo]

I have set it to daylight the day I got my M8. At least the review on LCD would look more consistent. But in C1 the as shot WB of daylight is too yellowish. I took a few whitebal shots and saved the setting in C1. Now I just use it for all daylight shots. I also created a few for shadow and overcast. Works fine so far.

[marknorton]

I've also found the AWB to be inaccurate and inconsistent. But in fairness, it's really not that much worse than most other digital cameras. It's best to use one of the presets, or even better to set the Kelvin temperature directly. After all, the M8 isn't a P&S, so why try to operate it like one?

 

Larry

 

This all comes back to the question of whether the M8 should be able to turn out decent JPEGs taking WB, sharpening and everything else into account. I believe at least part of the M8 target market will think it should.

 

AWB on the M8 is terrible in artificial and mixed lighting. Using presets is better but taking a white reference or manually entering the colour temperature from a meter as I do is best.

 

I used my D2x yesterday to turn out a bunch of pictures to sell some stuff on ebay and I noted before they were mangled for ebay that they were sharp and WB was spot on.

[carstenw]

There will be a firmware update at some point. If you shoot indoors, either use the Tungsten setting, or shoot DNG, which can be fixed later. Note that some programs work very poorly with the M8 still. Lightroom gives truly magenta skin in many situations, so some shots should be developed in C1/C1LE until the other programs mature a bit.

[bono0272]

Sorry I don't have a M8, but the same problem of AWB appears on my DMR. It is the Leica's weak point of providing correct WB to its professional digital cameras. Shooting RAW would be the best choice since you can always fine tune the WB afterwards.

 

BTW, what is an Expodisc?

[marknorton]

It's a white disk which you put on the front of the camera to diffuse the light which you can then use to take a WB reference shot.

[glenerrolrd]

This all comes back to the question of whether the M8 should be able to turn out decent JPEGs taking WB, sharpening and everything else into account. I believe at least part of the M8 target market will think it should.

 

AWB on the M8 is terrible in artificial and mixed lighting. Using presets is better but taking a white reference or manually entering the colour temperature from a meter as I do is best.

 

I used my D2x yesterday to turn out a bunch of pictures to sell some stuff on ebay and I noted before they were mangled for ebay that they were sharp and WB was spot on.

I talked to the Leica represenatives about the AWB problems with my R9/DMR ..which has similar issues to the M8 but no IR . I explained that my Canon 5D nailed the AWB in most lighting situations but the R9/DMR was all over the place. They told me that Canon and Nikon s AWB had an advantage in knowing the focus point . They agreed that the ExpoDisc was a good solution to getting it close in the camera.

[larry]

This all comes back to the question of whether the M8 should be able to turn out decent JPEGs taking WB, sharpening and everything else into account. I believe at least part of the M8 target market will think it should.

 

Mark,

 

I agree -- in the real world, things (and people) aren't as perfect as we might like them to be. :-)

 

Larry

[Your Old Dog]

Sorry I don't have a M8, but the same problem of AWB appears on my DMR. It is the Leica's weak point of providing correct WB to its professional digital cameras. Shooting RAW would be the best choice since you can always fine tune the WB afterwards.

 

BTW, what is an Expodisc?

 

Expodisc........ http://www.expodisc.com/index.php

[marknorton]

I talked to the Leica represenatives about the AWB problems with my R9/DMR ..which has similar issues to the M8 but no IR . I explained that my Canon 5D nailed the AWB in most lighting situations but the R9/DMR was all over the place. They told me that Canon and Nikon s AWB had an advantage in knowing the focus point . They agreed that the ExpoDisc was a good solution to getting it close in the camera.

 

...which excuse leaves me scratching my head.

[wattsy]

But in fairness, it's really not that much worse than most other digital cameras.

 

But it is much worse than most other digital cameras. Even cheap P&S digicams outdo the M8 in this respect. I gave up on the AWB after a few days of shooting with the M8 and have it permanently set to Daylight WB. Where the WB is out (most obviously when shooting under artificial light) I correct it in C1.

[hdrmd]

AWB in indoor lighting is so far off that using the Raw/DNG file is the only solution. It is easy to correct, but it is surprising tha such a camera could be this bad in the AWB mode. DR