GH2 Can you trust the white balance?

S

Sttratos

Veteran
Can you trust the white balance? I manually white balanced in an overcast day and got a very yellowish picture. Just to make sure, do you have to fill the screen with the white card as with all cameras or all you need is the little square in the middle? Because I filled the screen, but with the 14mm panckake lens this means the white card was very close to the lens. Thank you.
 
Just use kelvin temperature and forget about it, at worst manually white balance in your editing software.
 
I only adjust wb if the lighting is truly messing up the image in a bad way... it's so easy to fix in post.
 
But the problem is that I'm trying to match the AF100 and GH2 because I shoot with both together. So manual white balance is a must in both cameras to try to get them close. By your posts, does it mean I can't trust the white balance?
Do you have to fill the screen with the white card as with all cameras or all you need is to fill the little square in the middle? Thank you.
 
I don't have an iphone or ipad.

Could somebody at least answer the question about the middle square target or filling the whole screen?
 
When manually white balancing to a card, you only need to fill in the rectangle in the middle of the screen, NOT the whole screen. From the manual:

"Aim the camera at a sheet of white paper etc. so that the frame in the center is filled by the whiteobject only and then touch [SET]."
 
No, I cannot trust white balance after setting it manually. I also get yellow looking tones often when I manually set it. This is the main reason I'm looking elsewhere for a go-to camera. Maybe the BMC, I tried the Nikon D800 and also had trouble with the WB. Regular video cameras never give me trouble, the WB always looks good after a manual setting...
 
I thought this advice from http://dylanreeve.com/videotv/2012/shooting-tips-from-the-edit-suite.html was pretty interesting, because it goes against conventional wisdom:

4. The Preset is Your Friend
This one is a little contraversial, and I’ve actually had a stand up argument with a shooter about this – but I’ll lay it out here anyway. Stop manually white balancing and use your camera’s presets. There, I said it.
Especially in multi-camera reality scenarios it seems impossible for operators using manual white balances to actually maintain the correct colour. Unless you’re in a very unusual lighting situation it usually seems best to simply pick a preset that best matches the lighting conditions and go with that. All modern NLEs carry reasonable colour correction tools, and in most cases a basic correction can be worked into the post production.
Click to expand...

It actually makes sense when you think of it, particularly when coming from an editor.
 
The problem there is it's actually quite difficult for an average editor to fix WB in post.

Sure you can warm up an image, or cool down an image. But changing the WB in post is a quick way to degrade the over-all quality of skin tones with these DSLRs. You'll usually end up with a bland or fake looking skin tone unless you choose a solid WB on set. Adding contrast and blue/orange tones to an image to make it pop is one thing, but making your subject's skin look "right" and appealing requires both good shooting and editing. Lookin forward to shooting raw.
 
If you need to match cameras or having issues setting the white balance at a shoot record a few seconds of the grey or white card. That way you have a reference for the color picker when grading in post. It will get you really close.
 
This is the main reason why I bought a Sekonic C-500 color meter ( which has separate digital sensor and film modes ), and always set color by degrees Kelvin. Color is almost always bang on when metered correctly.
 
Bungess said:
No, I cannot trust white balance after setting it manually. I also get yellow looking tones often when I manually set it. This is the main reason I'm looking elsewhere for a go-to camera. Maybe the BMC, I tried the Nikon D800 and also had trouble with the WB. Regular video cameras never give me trouble, the WB always looks good after a manual setting...
Click to expand...

So it's best to just trust the presets then? But with the presets it's hard to match other cameras.
 
Gerson said:
When manually white balancing to a card, you only need to fill in the rectangle in the middle of the screen, NOT the whole screen. From the manual:

"Aim the camera at a sheet of white paper etc. so that the frame in the center is filled by the whiteobject only and then touch [SET]."
Click to expand...

Thanks. This makes things easier for sure. Sometimes filling the whole frame means the white card is too close to the lens. I wish video cameras were like the GH2 too and you only needed to fill the middle for white balancing.
 
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