One kind of WB problems

[H.M.T]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Hello,

Could somebody be so kind and help me little bit.

 

I have two kind of WB problems (or issues).

I have set manually WB in my Leica M8 to 5000 K but in my postproduction software Apple Aperture 1.52 tell me 5527 K. In 6000 K -> 6282 K. I do not know if this if problem but which is right ?

 

My bigger problem is following.

How You set WB in case where white should not be white

I mean. I take pictue from pure white house in middle of sunny day. House really looks pure white. I can use Auto or Daylight and result is good. But in early morning (or late evening) I like to take an other picture when white house is not anymore white. It is more or less gold. Sometimes my M8 can handle this, but very often house is looking more white in picure than in real world. I can fix this in pp (Aperture) but it needs me to remember this picture how it was when I took the picture. Normally I have huge number of pictures and I do not remember all these. Is there good and easy way to keep this "gold" colour ?

Is the "daylight" or some other "fix" WB temperature solution ? What about WB-filter/caps ? Do they job ?

 

I have allways wondered how people can set WB in pp software in correct. Do they really remember light situation in every picture

 

(sorry long text and bad English, my Finnish is much better )

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[scott kirkpatrick]

If you shoot dng files, correcting white balance is a matter of setting it so that a neutral grey card or a convenient white wall comes out white. It's a first step in processing them, and not a hassle, since most tools let you work out the white balance settings once and then apply them to a whole shoot.

 

But if you want golden light to stay golden, you don't fully correct the white balance, but adjust it so that the result is to your taste. You can set 6500 or 5500 and see if you like the result, of slide things around in post processing until you get the optimum effect. If you set the color temperature to more like 2400 (the actual temperature), the gold goes away.

 

scott

[blakley]

How You set WB in case where white should not be white

I mean. I take pictue from pure white house in middle of sunny day. House really looks pure white. I can use Auto or Daylight and result is good. But in early morning (or late evening) I like to take an other picture when white house is not anymore white. It is more or less gold. Sometimes my M8 can handle this, but very often house is looking more white in picure than in real world. I can fix this in pp (Aperture) but it needs me to remember this picture how it was when I took the picture.

 

The question of "how it was when you took the picture" is a very complex one - I think you mean is that you want the color to look similar to how you remember it. Of course, both your perception at the time and your memory are subjective, so there's nothing a computer can do to figure out what your eye saw and duplicate that.

 

Your best starting point is probably to shoot RAW, set the White Balance to "daylight", and adjust from there.

[H.M.T]

The question of "how it was when you took the picture" is a very complex one - I think you mean is that you want the color to look similar to how you remember it. Of course, both your perception at the time and your memory are subjective, so there's nothing a computer can do to figure out what your eye saw and duplicate that.

 

Your best starting point is probably to shoot RAW, set the White Balance to "daylight", and adjust from there.

 

I agree this thing is very much like feeling and rememberng. Sorry, I did not mention that I shoot RAW/DNG and in Aperture I can make quit nice version of any picture, but they are not what situation was in real shoot.

Today I was in nice restaurant where I took some pictures. There was candels, tungsten and natural light (from window). So I take couple of pictures with differend WB settings. In home I got 5-7 pictures which none was how I remember. So I take some adjustment with Aperture and I get good pictures. Then my vife said "Ugly colors is You Leica broken" She think that colors of restaurant was just something else what I have.

 

I even take some test pictures from small "grey" card which I have with, but then warm feeling was gone.

 

After shooting couple of hours I start with "cloudy" because in this time of year we have soft sunny and long "golden hour" here in Finland

 

I think that I will start to shoot B/W pictures, and my WB -problems are gone

 

-Kari (still with bad English)

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Kari what you need to understand is kelvin temp. for different light sources . Tungsten is 3200, hot midday sun is around 5600 and maybe a little more. 4 pm in the afternoon the sun starts to progressively get warmer maybe around the 4200 temp ,same with early morning. Approximate numbers here but as you can see, this has a direct effect on WB. one needs to remember a camera cannot think, it is set for a neutral grey and not always will do that. You the operator needs to regonize these color temp differences and needs to make changes. But all of this can be redone in post with your DNG files and raw processing. Frankly i never bother to set the temp just leave it on AWB and i always make the changes after the fact. If your shootng jpeg than in camera is more critical so if that is what you want to do than accurate temp changes needs to placed in camera

[H.M.T]

.... You the operator needs to regonize these color temp differences and needs to make changes. But all of this can be redone in post with your DNG files and raw processing. Frankly i never bother to set the temp just leave it on AWB and i always make the changes after the fact. If your shootng jpeg than in camera is more critical so if that is what you want to do than accurate temp changes needs to placed in camera

 

Hi Guy,

According Your words, I think I get some point here. It really seems that making some notes (to old fashion pen and paper ) might be a good idea for light condition. I make lot of wildlife/nature photos where I try to catch colour/light as they appear in moment of shooting.

 

And of course monitor calibration is in this case very very important. If I have understand right Canon has made consumer printer (reasonable price level) which understand ICC profiles. I use Pantone Huey (Graphic Deign & Video Editing mode) to get very nice colours at least in my MacBookPro.

 

Thanks

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Yes if your shooting late in the day you will look more golden in color because the kelvin is going more to the warm side , reason sunsets are so pleasing is because it goes warm. Now you can keep that warmth for wild life images or actually change it to more midday look. Reason why most of us recommend shooting Raw becuase you get more options on color temp of the images. But color temp is something you should know about and what it does to affect your images , so if you like setting the color temp on the camera instead of the AWB than you need to know the color temps so you can make proper adjustments. Monitor calibration is critical otherwise you just shooting blanks not knowing truly what your images look like. I use Eye One Display software and puck about 250 US and it does a nice job on monitor calibration even for LCD screens

[H.M.T]

...... But color temp is something you should know about and what it does to affect your images , so if you like setting the color temp on the camera instead of the AWB than you need to know the color temps so you can make proper adjustments...

 

Hello,

Ok. I have to try learning to estimate light/color temperature by myself and set it manually. Ofcourse I will make some notes to paper if reason or other result no not look like correct. I have also notice that when Leica shows picture in LCD after photo has taken, color is not correct. But if I look my taken pictures (by buttom play) and wait 1-2 s then all colors are coming up to picture. The huge 10 mega picture file takes some time to load.

 

Anyway, does somebody know is there any color temperature metering device (I mean in reasonable price level) which can tell me ambient light temperature ?

 

Kari

[jaapv]

It just goes to show that white balance is subjective. Even if you feel you have it right, a change of contrast and/or colour saturation and/or exposure level will totally change the picture. My personal take is that trying to get the original WB is an utopy, and that adjusting it in RAW conversion to fit the mood of the shot and personal taste is the only way to go.

A good example is a photograph I posted some time ago. The colours were exactly as I remembered them and white-balanced for that. Guy pulled it of the web and adjusted it by removing some yellow I suppose. It was not correct for the original situation any more - but a better photograph with more clear colour rendition.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Kari not sure i would invest in a color meter . If your shooting raw than a Whibal card or Expo disc will be a better option you can take a shot than adjust to the WB of the card and apply that to your images . Also Japp is right a lot of this is a matter of taste, shooting a sunset for example i don't want to WB rather it go warm. To me shooting jpegs is like putting a dog collar on, you just are limited to what you can do after the fact.

[H.M.T]

Thanks Jaap and Guy,

all right. I think that experience and more experience is key question here.

More I take pictures (and little bit thinking what I am doing) more I learn.

 

I will change also my attitude about post prodaction. I will try to see it one part of prosess to get picture what I like. In this moment reason or other I feel that pp is only "last try " to correct picture which I never get right in that certain moment

 

Reading Your experiences I really understand that WB is more or less in my head and attitude than absolut value of Kelvin.

 

Super thanks to all

[jaapv]

It is your darkroom. One of the main advantages of digital in my eyes is that I got my darkroom back (I used to do colour too, a horrible excercise really and not really worth while, but when I stopped doing it ,it delivered me into the grubby paws of colour labs ) In the computer I can prepare my shots just the way I like the before sending them off for printing. A liberating experience.

[Philinflash]

I find the AWB function on the M8 to be distinctly sub-par. It compares unfavorably to $200 purse-type digital cameras; in fact the M8 does not cope with changing light conditions nearly as well as those do.

 

Complicating the situation, it is difficult to overcome the problem by selecting alternate presets on the in-camera menu unless you know what the color temperature is on the Kelvin scale, which requires a separate color temperature meter that I do not want to buy or carry. For instance, what is the difference between the "Cloudy" and "Shadow" pre-settings on the menu? I cannot find what the Kelvin equivalent of these settings are, does anyone know? The manual is nearly mute on the subject of WB. One does not always have the time to experiment with different settings on the trot.

 

And why can't the camera remember Kelvin settings, instead of just starting off at the lowest color temperature, 2000K?

 

P. S. The firmware is fully up to date with 1.102.

 

Philip Kozloff

[hrosell]

I find the AWB function on the M8 to be distinctly sub-par. It compares unfavorably to $200 purse-type digital cameras; in fact the M8 does not cope with changing light conditions nearly as well as those do.

 

Complicating the situation, it is difficult to overcome the problem by selecting alternate presets on the in-camera menu unless you know what the color temperature is on the Kelvin scale, which requires a separate color temperature meter that I do not want to buy or carry. For instance, what is the difference between the "Cloudy" and "Shadow" pre-settings on the menu? I cannot find what the Kelvin equivalent of these settings are, does anyone know? The manual is nearly mute on the subject of WB. One does not always have the time to experiment with different settings on the trot.

 

And why can't the camera remember Kelvin settings, instead of just starting off at the lowest color temperature, 2000K?

 

P. S. The firmware is fully up to date with 1.102.

 

Philip Kozloff

 

 

Philip,

 

I concur with you: the AWB on the M8 is not very good. I got my new M8 (# 311XXXX with 1.092) 10 days ago, but since I had no filters all previous testings were not very valuable. Last week I upgraded to 1.102 and this week I got a B+W 486 filter for the 50/cron pre-asph, a Leica E46 for 35/lux asph & 28/Elmarit pre-asph, and a B+W 486 for 24/Elmarit pre-asph & 90/cron pre-asph, all non coded lenses. I am now trying to test with the 24mm (despite it is with a 486 rather than the Leica filter) and although my procedures are not at all scientific I do utmost to be consistent.

At broad noon Autumn daylight I just went through all the settings in the camera's WB, just to see what happened. Even in the AWB/Daylight modes there exist differences, as well as doing the Manual mode with a grey Kodak card and the white reverse (both of which in my opinion are regularly and with all types of light rendering the most "accurate" or close appearance) and also using a Gossen Colormaster 3F.

With the colorimeter it can also be somehow tricky: during a span of about 8 minutes I shot from my window at a wide avenue onto a bus stop about 100 meters away and when measuring the temp of incident light I got something like 4800ºK and the result was good but then I realised that the people in the bus stop were in a shadow area so I measured again but from the inside of the room (thus also in shadow) in order to "mimmick" the target, and I got 6400 K with the best result of all giving a slightly warmer rendition and in my opinion the most accurate result letting the subjective reality/memory/taste issues aside.

The rudimentary tests (without filters) with tungsten light were more or less similar but in this case the best – but not actually correct – color was obtained with the gray card in manual, which was almost similar as with the white card. The measured Kelvin temp was closer but still not good enough.

The worst scenario is fluorescent with whatever mode, even with filters. Best but far away were again those setting the WB manually with the gray/white card. The measurement with the Colormaster happened to be also way out.

I know from comments by Guy that Leica is surely endeavoring to correct these issues so I am patiently waitiing for a solution

In the meantime, I have decided to go the Guy ways, i.e. AWB all the time and then correct in C1. Or, if at all possible, to make some manual WB with cards.

 

As a matter of facts, my camera does keep the last Kelvin setting even if you change the mode.

 

Regards,

 

Horacio

 

p.s.: All the shooting was DNG.

[hrosell]

After re-checking the daylight results in C1 using eronald's profiles for 1.102 and despite the light cyan vigneting at the corners – with 486 filter on a 24/2.8 pre-asph, non coded lens, detection off – and considering all colors, I must rectify and say that for daylight at least, the best all-around setting is AWB!!!

 

Cheers,

 

Horacio

[Philinflash]

Philip,

 

I concur with you: the AWB on the M8 is not very good.

 

Horacio, thank you for supporting my points. Your use of the color meter is useful data, as well. However, ideally one would want to run tests like yours on a non-dynamic scene (no moving parts such as people and buses).

 

BTW, I agree with you that AWB seems to be the best preset selection for outdoor sunlit photos. My problem tends to be going in and out of deep shadows or having thick clouds rolling through while shooting.

 

Finally, I neglected to mention that my experience is without filters, since Leica still hasn't shipped me the compensating filters for my lenses.

 

PK

[doug_m]

Guy (who knows way more than I about thse things) is correct. Buy a 77mm expodisc. It is a really good tool. The large 77 mm size comes in handy when you need to work fast.

[jlm]

if your light is more golden evening sun, for example, even a white card in the scene will correctly appear golden. So in this case, adjusting WB in post to the card will cool down the image.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M