DPChallenge: A Digital Photography Contest You are not logged in. (log in or register) 
 

DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> RAW + White Balance
Pages:  
Showing posts 1 - 12 of 12, (reverse)
AuthorThread
 03/13/2007 02:14:12 AM · #1
I set my camera to RAW (Fujifilm S9500). I've been trying to take some nice shots. I noticed that there was a white balance option and it was set to AUTO. Is this normal? There are other options available but I thought the idea with RAW was that no white balance was added in the shot (Or am I completely misunderstanding the idea?)
 03/13/2007 02:31:33 AM · #2
I think what it does is set the white balance for the raw file to whatever you have set for your jpegs, in your case auto, you could easily choose daylight or tungsten, it doesn't matter too much. Once you open the file in a raw converter you will be able to adjust the color temperature to whatever you like to fix color casts. Someone correct me if I am wrong :)
 03/13/2007 02:39:23 AM · #3
Originally posted by jdannels:
I think what it does is set the white balance for the raw file to whatever you have set for your jpegs, in your case auto, you could easily choose daylight or tungsten, it doesn't matter too much. Once you open the file in a raw converter you will be able to adjust the color temperature to whatever you like to fix color casts. Someone correct me if I am wrong :)


no, it automatically calculates the white-balance the way the camera thinks it should be.

Ofcourse you can adjust in PS. But better is to be right in the first way, and use one of the options, or make a custom white balance yourself.

edit: the settings you use for RAW will automatically be used for jpeg when you shoot both together. when shooting seperate, the settings have nothing to do with eachother.

Message edited by author 2007-03-13 02:44:07.
 03/13/2007 02:49:52 AM · #4
Originally posted by biteme:
Originally posted by jdannels:
I think what it does is set the white balance for the raw file to whatever you have set for your jpegs, in your case auto, you could easily choose daylight or tungsten, it doesn't matter too much. Once you open the file in a raw converter you will be able to adjust the color temperature to whatever you like to fix color casts. Someone correct me if I am wrong :)


no, it automatically calculates the white-balance the way the camera thinks it should be.

Ofcourse you can adjust in PS. But better is to be right in the first way, and use one of the options, or make a custom white balance yourself.

edit: the settings you use for RAW will automatically be used for jpeg when you shoot both together. when shooting seperate, the settings have nothing to do with eachother.

I think thats what was trying to say :). And I agree it is always better to get it right first, but with raw if you have the wrong white balance you can fix it easily when you convert to use in PS, with a jpeg it is much harder to do.
 03/13/2007 03:22:48 AM · #5
Originally posted by jdannels:
I think thats what was trying to say :). And I agree it is always better to get it right first, but with raw if you have the wrong white balance you can fix it easily when you convert to use in PS, with a jpeg it is much harder to do.


The problem is that even in RAW it's not always possible to do. Sometimes "close" is as good as you can do if the color is badly off.
 03/13/2007 03:33:43 AM · #6
The best way to do it is with a gray card- or anything 18% gray for that matter, grass will do the same. Most digital cameras now have a setting that lets you set the white balance directly on the camera... fill your frame with the gray card, snap and in your menu set this picture as your white balance.

A RAW file does NOT automatically make white balance calculations, you have to tell it what the white balance is! However, it is much more flexible than JPEG or other types of files. If you have post editing programs hat specialise in RAW (like PhaseOne) you can come back and change your white balance, saturation, contrast, sharpness, and whatnot, directly onto your RAW file and convert it into what you want.
 03/13/2007 03:38:10 AM · #7
i could be wrong, but post-capture WB adjustment is similarly possible on either RAW or JPEG, with RAW having the advantage of not compromising the image quality (in terms of compression artifacts, anyway). But if we tweak WB on an uncompressed TIFF, isn't the result similar to RAW?
 03/13/2007 03:51:35 AM · #8
Nah, you're right. Especially previous to capture. Your camera white balance setting has the same effect on RAW, as well as TIFF or JPEG.

For changing the white balance afterwards... it's a matter of personal prefference. I find RAWs to be a lot more malleable than other types of files - even TIFFs. Maybe it's because of the range of programs and the ease of tweaking up your RAW files (vs PS which doesn't make it that easy) that I'm hooked on RAW. For example, with PhaseOne your white balance is one click away... click on anything that's white (or your gray card) and it's done.

Not to mention that comparing a PhotoShop CS2 conversion of a RAW file vs PhaseOne is what makes it for me.

Don't get me wrong... I give nothing but TIFF files to my clients (if it's going to print it has to be TIFF) and I still use PhotoShop (extensively) but RAW manipulation programs (like PhaseOne) just make the image all that much better in the end.

(Man, I'm starting to sound like an ad campaign for PhaseOne...)
 03/13/2007 06:32:15 AM · #9
So, should I play with the different settings, see what the differences are and then apply them before taking my shot?
 03/13/2007 08:20:34 AM · #10
In your camera menu you should have an option for "white balance" / "custom white balance" somewhere in there. You can use that to do a gray card.

If not, with a quick google search (Since I use Canon digital I'm not aware of all the gizmos and options on Nikon Digitals) here's what I found for the D80 relating to white balance:

White Balance Options
White balance modes on the Nikon D80 include Auto (usable from 3,500K to 8,000K), Incandescent (set to about 3,000K), Fluorescent (4,200K), Direct Sunlight (5,200K), Flash (5,400K), Cloudy (6,000K), Shade (8,000K), Choose K Temp (adjustable from 2,500 to 10,000K), and Preset (which allows you to manually adjust the white value by using a white card or object as a reference point). All white balance settings are adjustable from -3 to +3 units on an arbitrary scale by turning the Sub-Command dial (on the front of the hand grip) while pressing the White Balance button (with the exception of the Preset option, which is not adjustable). While we called it arbitrary, in all but Fluorescent white balance mode, each step on the fine-tuning scale corresponds to 10 mired of color shift. The fluorescent setting provides a wider range of variation to accommodate the wide range of colors available in fluorescent lighting. You can also bracket white balance exposures (see the Autobracketing discussion below). Higher values correspond to a decrease in the camera's white point, in degrees Kelvin (meaning the images become "cooler" in appearance). This is a very nice feature, as we often wish we could use one of a camera's standard white-balance settings, but tweak it to be just a bit warmer or cooler than the default. To be sure, some experimentation would be required to familiarize yourself with the impact of these "tweaked" white balance settings, but having them available is a big plus. The table below shows approximate white point temperatures in degrees Kelvin for the various adjustments in each of the major white balance settings.

Nikon D80 Resources
 03/13/2007 08:24:28 AM · #11
Originally posted by heavyj:
So, should I play with the different settings, see what the differences are and then apply them before taking my shot?


When you are shooting in RAW, it should not matter what WB you set in the camera. Most RAW processors will display, by default, at the parameters you have set in the camera, but that's just a matter of convenience. With many of them, you can set your own default display preferences.

Look, what a RAW file actually IS, is exactly that; the RAW data as captured by the sensor, before any processing is applied to it. When you make a JPG in-camera, what is happening is that you tell the camera, via your menus, "I want normal contrast, daylight WB, moderate color saturation, moderate sharpening", whatever you have dialed in. And the processor in the camera then actually does post-processing of the captured, RAW image and spits out a JPG, which is what the camera saves.

Now, when you are processing in Photoshop I am sure you have noticed, for example, that as you bump up contrast past a certain point you begin to lose details in both the shadows and the highlights. Or if you increase saturation past a certain point you may begin to block up already-saturated colors to where they take on a single, flat tonality with no detail in it. The same is basically true of all adjustments.

So if you take a JPG which was shot in-camera with high saturation and high contrast, for example, and try to desaturate it and lower the contrast, you end up with an image that is muddy-looking, and you can't really get back any color or luminance details in areas where the JPG was blocked up.

With RAW processing, on the other hand, you bypass the in-camera processing altogether: the only things that are immutable are the aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO at which you shot it, because these are basic camera functions that are involved in the CREATION of the RAW image at the moment of exposure. Everything else is adjustable: you can vary the contrast, the saturation, the sharpening, the white balance, and (up to a point) the exposure itself. And these are completely non-destructive adjustments: when you save the processed RAW image you save it as a TIFF or a JPG or (if working with Photoshop's built-in RAW processor) a PSD. The actual RAW file is never altered, you can't "save over" it. The adjustments you have made to the RAW file are saved as a "sidecar file" appended to the RAW file, and you can go back and make adjustments to the RAW file as many times as you wish. It's sort of analogous to an adjustment layer in Photoshop, a non-destructive overlay on the RAW file itself.

When it comes to white balance, while it is technically possible to make corrections to the color cast of an image in Photoshop, this is NOT the same thing as adjusting the white balance in RAW or in-camera (for a JPG). If you shoot in JPG and get the WB wrong in-camera, the corrected PS file will rarely look as "clean" as a JPG shot under the correct WB to begin with. With RAW, on the other hand, changing the WB in RAW conversion has exactly the same effect as changing in-camera for a JPG image. So one of the biggest advantages of RAW processing is that you don't have to worry anywhere near as much about WB when you are shooting; you can just play the variations in the conversion process and fine-tune WB to exactly where you want/need it to be.

Not only that, but if you are doing a whole series of shots under the same lighting conditions and find the WB is not where you needed it to be, you can adjust ONE of the shots until you get it right and then batch-process all the rest to those same parameters, essentially automatically. It's still a good idea to get WB right in-camera, just on basic principles, but for all practical purposes you can shoot in auto WB when shooting RAW and then worry about it afterwards in conversion, if it doesn't look quite right.

R.
 03/13/2007 09:18:28 AM · #12
Sweet...good read. I think I understand more now. Gonna give it another go.
Pages:  
Current Server Time: 09/03/2025 08:41:16 AM

Please log in or register to post to the forums.


Home - Challenges - Community - League - Photos - Cameras - Lenses - Learn - Help - Terms of Use - Privacy - Top ^
DPChallenge, and website content and design, Copyright © 2001-2025 Challenging Technologies, LLC.
All digital photo copyrights belong to the photographers and may not be used without permission.
Current Server Time: 09/03/2025 08:41:16 AM EDT.