burake
Posts: 282
Location: Antalya, Turkey
Registered: 7 Jun 2012
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WB in rooms with mixed light
Posted: 1 Dec 2012 at 18:28 GMT
updated: 1 Dec 2012 at 18:30 GMT
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Hi everyone,
On monday I'll be shooting in an office with mixed light sources...Weather looks good, so there'll be daylight coming from the windows and there'll be artificial light ; most probably mixed light of mainly fluorescent and some tungsten...
From what I have found on the forum these 2-by now closed- threads were the most interesting:
www.panoguide.com/forums/qna/6731/
www.panoguide.com/forums/qna/5368/
I never dealed with white balance until now; I always used auto or if it was a room overwhelmingly lit by daylight I used daylight WB. But I want to see if I can get better results with adjusting WB at the shooting place...I have a big white balance reference card (neutral grey) and know how to set custom WB on my 5Dmark2 although never used before )...Dave(?)-iam360Texas's method looked interesting to me but as far as I have understood he's taking image nr.1 with and without the white balance reference card on the ground...
quote:
"Mixed light is a some what a simple issue to resolve.
We shoot canon .cr2 raw Sigma 8mm 4 images around on the horizon. In mixed light, we use a WhiBal White Balance Reference Card. Photo Shoppes sell an expensive 18% gray card. Your camera needs to record "What is Grey" or what is white in your image. The reference card is a way to telling the camera 'this is a known white or gray'.
Our 1st click stop image at 0° we place the Gray Reference card in a position where most all the incoming light is reflected off the card back to the camera lens/sensor. Often this it is on the floor or ground.
Our 2nd image is also at 1st click stop image at 0° only with the grey reference card removed. 3rd 4th and 5th image and so on around the horizon.
We use Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Camera Raw Converter [free] (ACR) to convert the raw images to TIF's. In ACR we select all 5 images to load at one time. Now the gray card image is at the top.. and the real 4 images are below. Tag click the top image so it will be in the view window, then click the [SELECT ALL] button so the changes will affect all images.
Click select the White balance eye dropper and mouse over and click on the picture of gray card in the image. NOW all 5 images have the same white balance value.
While in ACR also make Chromatic Abberations adjustments.
DESELECT all 5 images. Now tag select 4 images and save them to your hard drive as 16bit TIF's. "
Wouldn't it be easier to put the card on the ground -or whereever it gets all the light sources reflecte-, get with camera closer to it until it covers "all the image area"; shoot and use this image to set the custom WB on the camera menu for the shooting?
As he seems not to be "around" these days I wanted to ask it here, to those who have experience with shooting in mixed light conditions...
Best regards
Burak
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hindenhaag
Posts: 844
Location: Netherlands
Registered: 7 Mar 2010
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Re: WB in rooms with mixed light
Posted: 1 Dec 2012 at 21:15 GMT
updated: 1 Dec 2012 at 21:42 GMT
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Hi Burak,
There have been a lot of discussions about this theme on the forum, with mirrors, different light sources etc.
Instead of the grey card I use spider cube from datacolor and I am happy with it. One extra shot in the beginning at 0 position and off you go.
spyder.datacolor.com/en/ Costs around €50, size similar to tennis ball.
Has white point, grey point, black point and a chrome ball on top to catch burned out highlights.
Can be used with PS, Lightroom, CaptureNX2 for example.
ge.tt/2PuO8jS/v/0
I've placed a pic for you to play around with. It's tif cause I normally have NEF and I think you are canonian.
As you can see the cube has two sides, one reflects more direct light source the other side more the shadow side. The hole on the black surface is deep black. Ball on top reflects the surrounding.
A lot of videos on you tube etc for use in LR PS or NX.
Regards,
Heinz
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No One
Posts: 536
Location: Sri Lanka
Registered: 14 May 2004
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Re: WB in rooms with mixed light
Posted: 1 Dec 2012 at 23:42 GMT
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Burak,
WB is highly over rated for most photography, especially real estate or other non critical color work. It's really only relevant in Fashion or other product studio work where you can control all the lighting sources typically.
What your typical customers want is beautiful color, not real - think over saturated.
When I shoot interiors now I never worry about WB while shooting since I shoot RAW images, everything is WB sunshine. Any issues are fixed in post.
Learn Photoshop or whatever image editor you use to apply selective lighting adjustments to those pesky off color areas. When you first convert a RAW file, use the dominate light source as the WB setting and then fix the other off light areas. So many different ways to do this.
The only way to control off color WB when shooting is to turn off those lights that don't fit or replace the blubs with one that do. digital post is so much faster than either of those other options.
Learn how to do digital post.
Cheers,
Robert
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Smooth
Posts: 4013
Location: Mount Panorama, Australia
Registered: 21 Jul 2004
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Re: WB in rooms with mixed light
Posted: 2 Dec 2012 at 5:12 GMT
updated: 2 Dec 2012 at 5:13 GMT
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Hello Burak,
I find White Balance reference critical in some scenes and less important in others. Still, having a point of reference for all shoots is ideal as it gives you a fall back information.
I have a page omnipix.net/knowledge/white_balance that my be of some interest to you.
You should never shoot with White Balance in auto. This can add a separate colour cast/temp to each image in your panoramic set.
I find myself using a combination of these tools but for obvious mixed lighting I use the Datacolor product and software.
Regards, Smooth 
www.omnipix.com.au
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burake
Posts: 282
Location: Antalya, Turkey
Registered: 7 Jun 2012
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Re: WB in rooms with mixed light
Posted: 2 Dec 2012 at 12:01 GMT
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Heinz thank you very much for your help...Spyder looks like a good compact solution for many light situations/conditions...Thanks for extra sharing an image...
Robert your post was very helpful for me...We mostly cannot control the light sources, so we will hardly find the perfect WB settings while shooting...The postpocessing will probably in some extend always be needed...
Smooth the informations on your page were very interesting...Colorright is too expensive for me -and probably not needed- but I put datacolor's spyder on my list of planned purchases...And until then I'm planing to shoot AWB and then adjust in ACR...
Here's a pano I shot in my bathroom today...Low Kelvin artificial light over the mirror (tungsten?) and daylight coming from the door...I shot in auto WB and left the values untouched in ACR, just played with highl/shadws...I just want to understand what could be better if I shot all the images with an -almost- accurate WB. What went wrong with the colours in this pano (hoping this is an appropiate example for mixed light situations)?
www.burakercumen.com/images/sanal-tur/outputAWB/I...
Best regards
Burak
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burake
Posts: 282
Location: Antalya, Turkey
Registered: 7 Jun 2012
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Re: WB in rooms with mixed light
Posted: 9 Dec 2012 at 17:05 GMT
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The link is suspended...
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