White Balance ?

[nicksnow]

What I want to ask is well, on the cameras like the 60D and 7D, the white balance presets are diverse and there's generally a preset for every possible type of common temperature. As long as you know which one to use properly, wouldn't these presets be what using a white/grey card would be? Wouldn't these presets themselves be based on every color temperature you'd come across and most likely based on tests done by Canon for every common scenario? It's not that I mind using a card, but like exposure, these things never tend to be perfect when using cards. Such as exposure, you can barely tilt card in the wrong direction and the exposure it's telling you to achieve will be off - white balance could possibly be just as delicate. So I'm keen to want to do something that's more solidly based in camera. Plus, when I'm just doing test videos and clips, a card is really very annoying to deal with; I bought one of those $9 white balance caps but it doesn't stay on, so it's just as annoying.

You've got it backwards...the presets can get you NEAR most scenarios, but color temp can really vary, so white balancing correctly is really the only way to get a precise WB. I know that on the 7d you can dial in the color temp, which might be easier for you. Instead of doing the annoying take a picture/WB thing, just focus on the white card and dial it in until you see white. Not sure if the 60d can do this. t2i definitely can't.

But I think I got white balance pretty much figured out, I'd love to talk about exposure again. As I mentioned, I've been trying to expose also using my 18% grey card, yet actually using it is about as confusing as not using a card at all. Barely tilting the card up or down changes the exposure meter's readings completely, and I'm never sure what position the card should be in, as I'm mainly testing this in natural settings that have very confusing shadow and light directions. An exposure card seems like something that only works properly on set where the overall illumination can't really be mistaken - what in the world can I do to expose for other scenarios? I'm really perfectionist about white balance and exposure, unless either are at their exact degree they should be, everything just looks bad. Auto white balance isn't the most horrible feature, but auto-exposure really is, it never gets anything even close to right - you can't change the exposure type (spot mode, center-weight, ect ect) in video mode, and it just sucks.

If you've got a t2i try out magic lantern. the newest update has a great spot meter system as well as zebra for over/under exposure. big help. also, don't give up on the white balance cap.. i've had pretty good results with the cheapo one i grabbed off ebay. (instructions are in the thread directly below this!)

 

[ESTEBEVERDE]

http://vimeo.com/groups/eos60d/videos/15576992

 

[Snapper123]

One thing I'm thinking of - which color temperature is solid white? If you dial that temperature in on the 7d for instance, wouldn't that be a better preset to take your manual white balance photo with instead of taking the photo of the card on auto white balance?

Also, a complex question I'll ask - I just did a test where I used a white card, an 18% grey card, and a gold piece of fabric for three different manual white balances. I took each primary photo using auto white balance, and then I went into the menu and set each photo to the custom white balance to see the three results. Each time, of coarse the result was different in color as I did a quick check panning the camera around the room. The strange thing is this: after using each of these as my custom, I turned around and took yet one more photo of each card/fabric using the custom I already set (ex. I took a another photo of the grey card using the grey card manual setting) and each time, the color histogram said that each of these colors were white and perfect. What this means if you're following my drift, is that the white card I have could be slightly green or blue for all I know, or my camera may have a color bias glitch beyond the white balance's capabilities, and the camera's histogram would not know the difference once the manual white balance is set. It'd simply carry on and tell you that that card is white, no matter if your image as a whole after that custom looks green as heck, like mine does.

Like basically, I still believe that manual white balance is supposed to see a perfectly white source, and combat with the color of the light shining upon it to give you a perfectly invisible tone as a whole, especially if you're using set lighting, which is practically what the room I'm in is set up to be (four bright overhead lights, all same tempeture, no other light sources in the room.) It's just like the video above, the room's walls turn quite green with the paper white balance, but with the card, the walls look more subdued and the camera is also picking up the computer's light that's shining on the man's face. But when I do a manual white balance using the same white card that he's using, the outcome is that everything in my room is minimally green hued, and I can change the color graph to about 4,4 in toward the bottom left corner, and then it seems to give a tone that's quite invisible - nothing looks green, red, or blue.

So I'm thinking my camera may have a pretty severe color bias? If what I'm thinking is correct, this bias would override anything the camera would sort out using the white card, which is a problem.

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Then comes my exposure questions. I've been doing tests like crazy with exposure (still to this day don't know why photgraphy mode has a live view histogram and video mode doesn't.) and I'm really getting nowhere. Using an %18 grey card is truly very unpredictable, if it barely turns one way or the other, the card itself darkens and messes up what the camera sees, and worse than that, I'm using a 50mm so it's really annoying to reposition the camera a foot from the card so that no other color interferes (and I can't pick up the card from the subject spot and simply stick it in front of the camera because that changes the exposure reading somehow) and ugh, I just feel like it's a mess. Who even really knows for sure if 18% is the right exposure color, some say it's 12%. Would I be better off just to get a light meter?