To white balance or not to white balance

[wwshack]

I had a wee play with my camera yesterday to see what difference the AWB and Custom settings on my Canon 300D actually makes.

I make no excuse for the quality of these photos, they were treated exactly the same (Manual exposure, 1/200 @ f8 and used a Photoshop action) except the first one was set to the AWB setting and the second used a Custom white balance derived from a Lostolite grey balance card.

In the end it boils down to personal preference and I tend to prefer removing the colour cast.

Auto White Balance Setting


Custom white balance


Just for the record here is the reference grey card photo

[BA747-436]

I find that WB preference settings are most usefull when shooting cabin shots with differant lighting. A prime example is Virgin Atlantics 'blue' tine lighting. Screws the shot up royaly if you use AWB. It is also quite usefull to have a play around in differant natural lighting conditions. Some nice effects can be obtained by playing with the colour temperatures.

[Mark Ralph]

Hi Wallace,

I am guessing with the sun low in the sky at the moment shot 1 best reflects the actual scene?? Shot 2 looks a tad cold.

I normally leave my Canon on AWB and just tweak the RAW if it needs it, not very often though.
Iv'e never used a Grey card, is that the actual colour, it looks Beige

[Airbus_A320]

I just shoot raw and deal with it later.

[sluger020889]

I use custom WB only in the middle of the day, when the setting/rising sun isn't casting a warm glow on the aircraft. I either use a white piece of paper or my white car as a reference and it works great every time. Its also a god send in crappy weather.

I like your custom WB shot except for the concrete...seems to be very blue.