White balance

[Charzes44]

Many years ago, long before auto everything, many of us used a hand held exposure meter to determine exposure. But things have moved on, a bit! Nowadays, whilst auto everything is the way to go, I find that 'auto white balance' in some situations is not that brilliant really. So, my question is, does anyone have a colour temperature meter? Have you considered getting one? What are your thoughts? I realise that this doesn't apply if you are a RAW only person, but I'm not!

 

[DaveNJ]

Some wedding photographers I know use an ExpoDisc (the earlier version made of glass, v1 and v2 iirc) to nail white balance. No personal experience with one though, hopefully someone here has or a different method.

 

[Richard]

Why would you carry a meter when you can carry a piece of white or grey card and set the camera's white balance with that?

(To my shame, I don't do either of those things, and its only recently that I've stopped using AWB at all times)

-R

 

[John King]

Why would you carry a meter when you can carry a piece of white or grey card and set the camera's white balance with that?

(To my shame, I don't do either of those things, and its only recently that I've stopped using AWB at all times)

-R

I know that Olympus cameras can do a custom WB from a sheet of ordinary white copy paper, but has this become universal now?

 

[bmhome1]

I had a Minolta color temperature meter back in film days. It cost over $400 AND only read out compensation for Wratten gel filters mounted on lenses. Good riddance.

 

[DaveNJ]

I know that Olympus cameras can do a custom WB from a sheet of ordinary white copy paper, but has this become universal now?

It has, should be simple on Fuji cameras (pg 107 in Fuji XT3 manual). Some are more annoying to set than others.

 

[John King]

It has, should be simple on Fuji cameras (pg 107 in Fuji XT3 manual). Some are more annoying to set than others.

Thanks, Dave.

 

[MountainMan79]

If you’re shooting raw, why bother using anything other than AWB? If something looks funny, you can adjust it afterwards to whatever you’d like.

 

[bastibe]

Most of the time, I just shoot in Daylight white balance. Which means mornings are blue, evenings are golden, and indoors are warm. To me, this is often much more natural than balancing them all to the same dull midday-equivalent. The only exception from that are indoor scenes with terrible light.

 

[Charzes44]

If you’re shooting raw, why bother using anything other than AWB? If something looks funny, you can adjust it afterwards to whatever you’d like.

Yes, but I don't shoot RAW.

 

[Charzes44]

Most of the time, I just shoot in Daylight white balance. Which means mornings are blue, evenings are golden, and indoors are warm. To me, this is often much more natural than balancing them all to the same dull midday-equivalent. The only exception from that are indoor scenes with terrible light.

This was a conclusion I reached some time ago, but occasionally I feel that I could slightly improve on that!