D70+SB-800 What White balance setting

[paul_keith_dickinson]

Hi I am shooting inside and outside of a church on a sunny day,using

my D70 set on P mode.My SB-800 set on TTL-BL,for fill in flash.My

first question is what setting should I have the white balance on.I

also shoot with a Fuji S3 pro and if someboby could give me the same

information I would be most greatful. Paul

[joenieters]

Balance depending on which light is the primary light for your subject unless you want a different effect. Outside, with plenty of sun, your flash should be providing fill with daylight as your main lighting. If your not moving into and out of shade, set your custom white balance to the conditions and see if you like it. Otherwise set on daylight or shade. If you are shooting RAW you can make adjustments later. If JPG, take your time to try "preset", "Daylight or Shade" and "Flash" to see which gives you the best color.

[csuzor]

I have given up (perhaps prematurely) on getting the right white balance in my D70. I leave the WB to auto, and just shoot NEF. When converting in photoshop, it finds what the camera believed was the right balance, and often I just have to adjust up to +-200K to get the right balance. Strangely, on similar shots in a similar environment, when there is a mix of sunlight and shade, the auto settings can change by as much a +-500K, and this clearly set a color cast on the images, which is easily corrected.

 

My advice: don't waste time getting the right white balance, just shoot NEF, and spend as much time as possible capturing those magic moments to memory.

 

Christophe

[ravi_swamy]

If you are inside then use the gels that come with the SB-800 to match the flash to the internal lighting and set your white balance to match.

[roxanne_mitchell]

isn't there a way you can customize the white balance using D70? I'm not sure what menu setting it is, but then you hold a white card in front and take a reading, and it sets the white balance specifically for the environment you're in.

[lukas_kisiel]

It sounds like you're shooting a wedding. I agree, make sure you're shooting RAW and concentrate on catching the perfect photo moments. You can change white balance later very easily in Photoshop. PS CS2 RAW plug-in works great for that because you can batch-adjust several (20-50+) photos at once just with a single click, by setting Kelvin temperature number.

 

Back to your question, for weddings, outside I always use Auto WB because I find it works pretty well. Inside a church it depends how much light you have. If it's too dark I use tungsten gel on SB800 and set WB to Incandescent. If there is plenty of light and flash just fills shadows I don't use gel and set WB to Auto. I don't use Custom WB during weddings because it's too easy to screw up. Since I shoot NEF I can set it to anything I want later.

 

Compared to procedures such as exposure adjustments, sharpening, cropping work, setting WB in Photoshop CS is a no brainer!

[klix]

Like others said... WB = Auto, shoot NEF, Adjust WB in CS/CS2

[matt_t__brooklyn_]

Roxanne: You can certainly manually set white balance on the D70. You switch to preset and then take a picture of a white card under the lighting conditions.

 

I use this when shooting inside under incandescent light (where the auto white balance is particularly poor).

 

However, in daylight, I find the auto settings to be fine, and adjust afterwards (shooting in NEF).

[jay_blocksom]

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>Paul Keith DickinsonPhoto.net Patron, jul 29, 2005; 08:41 a.m.</B>

<br>

Hi I am shooting inside and outside of a church on a sunny day,using my D70 set on P mode.My SB-800 set on TTL-BL,for fill in flash.My first question is what setting should I have the white balance on.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

Actually, that's two questions, requiring two different answers.

<br>

<br>

In all cases, doing a custom white-balance setup on the spot, under the same lighting conditions you're about to shoot under, is your *best* bet.  But failing that, for outdoor shooting with or without fill-flash, pick whichever of the "Dir. Sunlight", "Cloudy", or "Shade" settings seems to best approximate the current conditions, and hope for the best -- it will likely be "close enough", as long as you're shooting in NEF (RAW) mode.  I would recommend *against* the "Auto" setting, simply because this will mean the actual setting use can (and probably will) vary from frame to frame, making batch-mode post-processing next-to-impossible.

<br>

<br>

For indoor shooting, it's a whole 'nother ball game.  Unless your flash unit is going to be the *sole* (or at least overwhelmingly dominant) light source, you *MUST* use the appropriate filter gel on the SB-800 to match (as closely as possible) its output to the ambient light, or you will surely have a huge (and probably un-fixable) mess on your hands come post-processing time.  This stands regardless of what setting(s) you use in the camera and/or flash unit.  Beyond that, the same advice applies as for outdoor shooting:  A Custom WB setting is best; but you can *probably* find one of the preset modes (such as "Incandescent") which provides a match which is "close enough" to be zero-ed in later during post-processing.

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><I>

I also shoot with a Fuji S3 pro and if someboby could give me the same information I would be most greatful. Paul

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

Precisely the same logic applies, regardless of the camera.  The settings names may be (and probably are) a bit different on the Fuji; but the principles are the same.

<br>

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><I><B>Christophe Suzor, jul 29, 2005; 09:41 a.m.</B>

<br>

My advice: don't waste time getting the right white balance, just shoot NEF, and spend as much time as possible capturing those magic moments to memory.

</I></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

Sorry, but I must rather strongly disagree with this advice.  Sure, *IF* you're shooting outdoors under "average" conditions and everything is right with the world, you'll *probably* luck out and the results will not be so far off that you can't patch it up later in post-processing.  But that is still far from the ideal approach -- and when everything is NOT just exactly right with the world, it can (and probably will) come back to bite you in the a__.

<br>

<br>

The key thing is that, when using multiple light sources (such as fill-flash under either daylight or any of the many varied forms of artificial lighting found indoors), you MUST balance/match these two light sources to each other, regardless of any overall WB setting in the camera or similar.  Failing that, you will have differently-colored light in different parts of the same frame, making reasonable post-processing patch-ups at least very difficult, if not outright impossible.

<br>

<br>

[csuzor]

Jay Blocksom , jul 29, 2005; 03:02 p.m.

The key thing is that, when using multiple light sources (such as fill-flash under either daylight or any of the many varied forms of artificial lighting found indoors), you MUST balance/match these two light sources to each other, regardless of any overall WB setting in the camera or similar. Failing that, you will have differently-colored light in different parts of the same frame, making reasonable post-processing patch-ups at least very difficult, if not outright impossible.

 

 

That is great advice, thanks!

[fourfa]

great advice.... if you care that the ambient light doesn't match the flash lighting. Sometimes the nasty green fluorescent background is just what you want. I'm sometimes fond of extra-warm incandescent backgrounds. And night cityscapes, I'm very fond of all the different incandescent/fluoro/sodium colors all mixed up. All up to you.

 

also it may not be simple - in my workspace, I have nothing but 5000K daylight fluoro tubes. Not all tubes are nasty green, or match well with any WB preset. there are at least five different color temps of fluoro tubes at home depot. Is there even a gel for the monochromatic sodium lamp?

[paul_keith_dickinson]

Many Thanks .Excellent input from you all,a great help.The only problem brain in overload once again.Paul

[chris m., central florida]

I'm thinking you've got some great advice, although a bit complicated. Before going into this with time consuming gel setup etc. try testing the camera with all methods of setting WB. I've found that using the Flash WB setting often produces results that match or are very close to the results I get when going through the custom WB procedure.

 

So, outside of a custom white balance on location, I just leave the camera in Flash WB mode if I've got the SB-800 attached. I does an excpetionally good WB exposure this way. I then tweak the RAW files in Capture before converting to JPEG for printing. I'm also using Flash WB setting for use with multiple flash units and getting very accurate color.

 

Also take a look at downloading custom curves as those can help quite a bit with how your files look right out of the camera. It's not all about WB - manipulating contrast, highlight recording and saturation can influence color rendition.