The M8's Wacky Auto White Balance

[lars_bergquist]

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I seem to remember the time when we had just three white balances: Daylight, halogen tungsten and 'Edison tungsten'. And when you had chosen one, it stayed on until you changed film in the camera. Who complained?

 

Commercial photographers, mostly in studio environments, used CC correction filtering. How many of you did that? To do it right, you had to have a three-channel colour meter. How many have one? (Well, I do – and it is a continuing education.)

 

I use only three settings: Daylight, Cloudy and Auto. The last is for grab shots. If I find that I have time, I set a Kelvin value, simply by experience.

 

Remember, we are not worse off than when we shot reversal film. But it seems that the more options we have, the more we complain. Not that I deny that it would be fine if we had reliable AWB. But that would mean that the camera could think and evaluate the subject and lighting. That won't happen soon (understatement of the day). There is as yet no substitute for the brains of the photographer.

 

The insufferable old man from the Age of Kodachrome I

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[j. borger]

I never relied on AWB with any digital camera .... that;s one of the reason why i shoot raw. So for me personaly "fixing" AWB has no priority at all .... it will never be good enough .. no matter what they do ...!

[scott kirkpatrick]

I seem to remember the time when we had just three white balances: Daylight, halogen tungsten and 'Edison tungsten'. And when you had chosen one, it stayed on until you changed film in the camera. Who complained?

 

The insufferable old man from the Age of Kodachrome I

 

I presume those days predated the invention of the flourescent bulb or the sodium streetlight?

OK, they didn't, I know (I used many rolls of Kodachrome at ASA 10, too), but no one dreamed of customizing a film for such awful light.

 

I think the issue with the M8's AWB vs our expectations is that

(a) it has such a limited palette of suggestions, and none of them fits mixed indoor outdoor lighting, and

( it jumps around within the limited palette in a way which defies explanation to whoever is looking over our shoulder at the moment.

 

If I were Leica, I would redo the AWB so that the end result varies continuously, and thus has a smaller variation from shot to shot in a given scene. And detect mixed lighting, where the first pass correction involves a significant warming or cooling shift.

 

Here's an example -- sitting in my office, where I should be doing something else, I take four shots in a mixture of daylight and flourescent light. The first two are at ISO 1250, the second at ISO 320. On shots 2 and 4 I cover the blue dot with my finger to see what that will do. The as-shot color balance settings reported in C1 are 7400,0; 5650,-1; 3550,0; and 3550,0. This appears to be the limited palette, all appearing within a few seconds, and all for unmixed lighting. I then click-balanced all four, using the mouse which is visible through the handle of the coffee cup as the most neutral object in the room. Results are 3350,+12; 3200,+13; 3250,+12; and 3300,+13, and are also attached. Notice that there is a consistent color balance available and it is not sensitive to the ISO change that I threw in. If the camera had decided to offer me 3550,+12 on all four, I would have been perfectly happy with that as a starting point.

 

scott

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[scott kirkpatrick]

Scott--the M8 doesn't have an outboard WB sensor like everyone else. They take WB, IIRC, from a white blade on the shutter panel. I'm thinking maybe there's a physical limit on how accurate it is on faster shutter speeds or something?

 

Counting wires on Mark's shot of the backside of the blue dot, it appears to have only a single light sensitive element, so it can't compute white balance, except in comparison with the exposure reading made off of the closed shutter's silvery spot. I've only found small effects of the blue dot in my experiments (see above). In the white spot that you see on the outside of many DSLRs for white balance are there two (for K) or three (for K and warm/cool shift) sensors? At least all this stuff is being done before you press the shutter, so it is not going to care whether you are shooting at 1/8 or 1/8000.

 

scott

[wattsy]

Oh brother. I hope you'll give the M8 blessing next Sunday, too.

 

LOL.

 

 

The M8 AWB is simply piss-poor - worse than the AWB you get with even the cheapest digicam (probably on a par with those keyring digicams you can get for 20 quid) - and Leica should be pretty embarrassed about it. However, ultimately it's no big deal for me. I switched my WB to the 'daylight' setting six months ago and left it there.

[rosuna]

Scott--the M8 doesn't have an outboard WB sensor like everyone else. They take WB, IIRC, from a white blade on the shutter panel.

 

I hope they can use the "blue dot" for WB measure.

[tashley]

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Oh brother. I hope you'll give the M8 blessing next Sunday, too.

 

Fair cop - I guess there are some issues with which we're all so b*****y long-suffering that one has to adopt the tone of prayer just to be able to speak about it without spitting! I'm sending off an M8 body and a lens this morning, leaving me two lenses down. If I wasn't patient, I'd be murderous!

 

;-(

 

Tim

[jaapv]

LOL.

 

 

The M8 AWB is simply piss-poor - worse than the AWB you get with even the cheapest digicam (probably on a par with those keyring digicams you can get for 20 quid) - and Leica should be pretty embarrassed about it. However, ultimately it's no big deal for me. I switched my WB to the 'daylight' setting six months ago and left it there.

 

I agree about the embarrasment factor, but as I have never seen any digital camera with really good whitebalance I find it pretty immaterial whether it is just a little bit off or wildly beside the mark, I have to correct in Raw conversion anyway. A miss is as good as a mile - or rather as bad in this case. That cellphones and other shutterless wonders not too bad is logical - they read the sensor directly for their WB.

[Philinflash]

My Crazy Sons, shots taken with M8 and 90 mm

 

2 pictures shot in a coffee shop big windows right and behind me, AWB way off in the first picture compare to the second one, shots are done maybe 5 seconds apart.

Is there a problem in general with the AWB?

My camera is it not doing all the time, but to often for my feeling.

 

It looks like those two guys could keep you real busy!

 

I have had similar experiences with random results from AWB. I think this has always been indoors with indirect natural lighting coming at a low angle from the side. That could be similar to what you describe. There must be a rational explanation. Covered sensor? If it is user error, let me know and I'll try to fix it; if it is equipment error, Leica please fix it.

 

In any event, I won't be wasting any prayers on the problem.

[terence fairweather]

I only see the problem if I shoot in JPEG. All DNG photos are spot on every time.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Ken are you on continous mode here

[Guest sirvine]

I was shooting my R-D1 this weekend and realized how much better the WB is on that camerea....not perfect either, though.

[thpeters]

Hello Guy Mancuso,

 

For sure you read this seeing your response earlier in this tread, please put the AWB on the top of the laundry list.

 

 

Thanks in Advance.

 

Theo

[Guest guy_mancuso]

It's been there for awhile actually and Leica certainly knows about it for sure. Hopefully they are continuing to solve some of this issue.

[ken_tanaka]

Ken are you on continous mode here

 

Excellent question, Guy. No, the camera was on single-shot mode for all of these images.

 

@Tim: "I'm sending off an M8 body and a lens this morning, leaving me two lenses down. If I wasn't patient, I'd be murderous!"

When Leica promoted the M8 as a superb traveling camera you should have read the footnote which read, "It will do most of its traveling without its owner."

 

I've become rather fatalistic about my camera. I am certain that the Spirit of Oskar has, by now, perused this thread. Despite my good luck to-date I will be punished for my weak faith. One moonless night soon Oskar's cold, dead finger will reach up from the ground and pull my M8 back to the Fatherland for der service. I frequently wake sweating from this vision.

 

Keep the faith...or sell it on eBay.

[tashley]

Excellent question, Guy. No, the camera was on single-shot mode for all of these images.

 

@Tim: "I'm sending off an M8 body and a lens this morning, leaving me two lenses down. If I wasn't patient, I'd be murderous!"

When Leica promoted the M8 as a superb traveling camera you should have read the footnote which read, "It will do most of its traveling without its owner."

 

I've become rather fatalistic about my camera. I am certain that the Spirit of Oskar has, by now, perused this thread. Despite my good luck to-date I will be punished for my weak faith. One moonless night soon Oskar's cold, dead finger will reach up from the ground and pull my M8 back to the Fatherland for der service. I frequently wake sweating from this vision.

 

Keep the faith...or sell it on eBay.

 

LOL... did you notice BTW that the article which last month's LFI advertised for this month's publication, on the subject of focus shift, somehow never made it into print? Nor is it advertised for next month's. That Oskar dude has one long finger...

 

;-)

 

tim

[albertknappmd]

I suspect that my thread on M8 Blues really belongs here. My problem is probably all related to the AWB but.... how do you explain the strange signage above the LCD though..... That is where I think we have a second but related problem in the firmware....

[sean_reid]

I hope they can use the "blue dot" for WB measure.

 

It's just a simple metering cell that the camera uses to estimate lens aperture.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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[Tim B]

I put this in a separate thread originally, because it seemed to have a slightly different point from this thread, but perhaps it is better here. Apologies if this is confusing - please use the "Weird Manual WB" thread for a reply if more appropriate.

 

I too have experienced the weird AWB on my M8. However, I have also discovered something strange when using manual Kelvin settings.

 

I experimented this evening using my new 28mm Elmarit-M f/2.8 ASPH. Using a B+W 486 IR cut filter, shooting with Tungsten lighting, I set 3000K for white balance, which looked pretty good on the LCD. However, on opening the file in ACR 3.6 the white balance setting shows up as 3300K. The same shift occurs at other settings too.

 

Has anyone else noticed this? Any explanation? It is a bit of a nuisance since I then have to reset WB in ACR.

 

Tim

[fotografr]

I've never seen a digital camera with perfect AWB, and I've used several. Some get much closer than others, but in the end I've found I ALWAYS need to tweak the color balance to get it right. Fortunately, assuming one shoots RAW format, there are very easy solutions. I set the camera WB to something close to what the lighting conditions are (anything BUT AWB), then pull out a small WhiBal card and shoot a couple of frames. If the lighting changes, or if I start using a flash, I just take a new shot of the WhiBal card. When I bring up the images in my RAW converter, I "select all" and use the WhiBal card image to make a correction to the entire batch. Using this method, my M8 gives me the most accurate skin tones of any camera I've used. They are absolutely dead on. Just my opinion, but it seems to me this is a very small effort for getting the most out of my M8.

 

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the WhiBal cards, here is a link:

 

WhiBal Gray Card for Digital Photo White Balance - RAW Workflow

 

Cheers,