Auto white balance vs. daylight balance outdoors.

[fevbusch]

I'm getting ready for outdoor springtime shooting with my K100D and a question popped into my head.
   I've pretty much changed my shooting habit to AV priority so I can vary aperture with my Sigma 50mm 2.8 EX macro lens. I also tend to stop down most shots with AE-L button, for depth of field and to limit auto focus hunting.
  Question is, am I better served outdoors by using daylight balance or should I use auto white balance.  I'll be shooting flowers, Landscapes and other interesting things.  Advise, please, Freddy

[manual_focus]

Here's my advice, but its just that. 

Stay with AWB.

AWB can handle light within the range of 4000K to 8000k and will select any value within that range, including a "Color Deflection" (Tint in ACR) correction to give a neutral (white) color balance.  This light temperature range is sufficient to handle most outdoor lighting from just after sunrise to just before sunset.

If you select one of the specific White Balances, you are limiting yourself to a specific temperature and color deflection range, which is smaller than AWB can handle.  If a cloud begins to block out the sun, the temperature of the light will change and if you have selected Daylight your images will have a blue color cast to them. 

Only Tungsten is outside the AWB range.

That all being said, no matter what setting (AWB or a specific temp.) you choose, there are times when you will still get a color cast to your image (mixed sun and shade, sunrise/sunset, etc.) and need to make adjustments if you have saved your images as RAW (PEF or DNG). 

So, my suggestion is for outdoors scenes, shoot with AWB in RAW.

[fevbusch]

Thanks, Manual Focus. 
 I'm definitely going to stick with AWB outdoors. Indoors, I noticed that sometimes daylight setting works when tungsten setting doesn't (possibly because I'm getting good natural light from the windows) which shows how important it is to try different options when going for a shot.
  Yeah, what I like about raw is that there's a setting for "exposure adjustment".  Since I'm already pretty good with Adobe Photoshop I processed a few shots doing only "exposure adjustment" with raw and the rest with Photoshop, after converting back to jpeg ( I have yet to see if I can convert back to tiff). Anyway the raw definitely is an improvement over  high jpeg and I'll do a load of shots with raw this spring outdoors with my 50mm 2.8 Sigma macro.  Freddy

[Joshua Hakin]

I always used to use AWB, but now I've switched to using Daylight.
The only reason for this is one small thing I didn't like with the AWB,
if I was shooting a landscape with plenty blues sky I found that I wasn't partial to the Tint i got from AWB
It would always make my skies cyan/blue whereas I wanted a more royal blue (I was after the colours I got from shooting Kodak slides).
So, for me, I'm used to the results from slides and want to have the same workflow with my digital settings.
But, it's all moot if you're using RAW as it can be fine tuned so well.

[fevbusch]

I like using Raw just to use the "exposure" adjuster and I then do everything else in Adobe Photoshop where I have much more experience.  What do you think of that method.  Also, can one change from raw to tiff rather than jpeg, or would tiff have any impact on the quality.  Freddy

[Joshua Hakin]

I would also suggest adjusting the colour from the RAW converter too, since it's easier and is non destructive to the colour gamut.
I also suggest at least some sharpening from the RAW too and then fine tuning it in Photoshop with USM.
I always use TIFF as it's not a compressed file. It's hard to tell the difference between TIFF print and a JPEG print up to about 8x10, but if you go higher in dimensions you're safe to go with TIFF's.
If you are worried about saving file size, TIFF's can be compressed... but I never have tried it... I guess I should do that sometime.
Anyhoo... those are just my personal techniques, so I thought I would chime in. 

[fevbusch]

Thanks, Josh.  I'll try using more color options in raw. Do you know the equivalent of Photoshops "selective color" in raw.  Freddy

[Joshua Hakin]

Hmm, well if you use Selective Color a lot in PS then just keep using it, I was just suggesting getting it as close to the way you like it in RAW before sending it to PS. That way you prevent doing any drastic adjustments in PS. Some people just open in RAW and send it to PS without ever touching the colour.
But you may want to play around with the sliders under the Calibrate tab in RAW and get a feel for what they can do. These basically control the tint and saturation being provided from the individual RGB channels.
Sometimes it takes a bit of playing around to see what they can really do.

I'm curious about your adjustments in Selective Color... I don't use it too often myself unless I'm removing color cast in the mids.
Do you use it a lot?
Do share some techniques!

[faber]

oh... Manual_focus, you did my day. I do really love Seattle, and looking at its Space needle makes me happy.

I'll be there in july

oh.. you're right.. the topic... ehm... what where we talking about?

[fevbusch]

Josh, I use the selective color a lot when I shoot the company web shots and when I shoot under lights for press releases of new product images, usually styled shots with props, flowers etc.
  My company insists on accurate color and my lights are so atrocious (3- 250 watt incandescent bulbs I get from B&H photo)
 that I have to do a lot of pp to adjust with selective color (backing off on one color and pushing up another color) and also, because I shoot on mostly white backgrounds I have to almost always bump up brightness of the subject using auto levels or just applying minute adjustments of "levels" or curves as necessary.  When I shoot my next round of web shots (maybe 20 or 30 shots) I might try RAW.  If the product (usually packaging items, bags, boxes , ribbon etc.) is not very complex I sometimes shoot on a black background which gives me better lighting on the subject.  I then silhouette the background away with the help of "magic wand" and subsequent cleaning up extraneous background messes with large,
brushes that leave a blur around the edges to show smooth transitions in shadowy areas.  Believe it or not I have a canon D60 that I just have trouble shooting with under low "studio" light.  I usually use my little Nikon 4300, which is a very sharp nice little 4 mp camera which
works better under my "studio" lights, which are essentially low light
bulbs that I have to keep very close to my subjects.  Anyhow, I plan to try out my K100d with Sigma 50mm 2.8 ex macro lens since a lot of my web shots are of single items like small shopping bags or rolls of ribbon.  I take remarkable shots of my cat, etcetera in the house with the Sigma using no light at all.  So I'll try it under my studio lights.
  Hope this information will help someone and appreciate your input, Josh.   Freddy

[Joshua Hakin]

  My company insists on accurate color and my lights are so atrocious (3- 250 watt incandescent bulbs I get from B&H photo)
 

Do you set you WB to Tungsten?

[fevbusch]

I find that the 4300 P&S camera works under "studio" lights best using automatic function, which utilizes only auto white balance.  I tried other manual settings which always ended in frustration.  I'm hoping though that since I have  recently been successful in P mode in my digital slr k100d that I may have better luck now in manual settings under studio lights.  then, of course, i would definitely set the K100d to Tungsten.  I'll wait till next batch of web shots to experiment in AV mode under my studio lights with the K100D and Sigma 2.8 eX macro lens.  Freddy