White balance help

[michaelb]

I was out shooting some pumpkins tonight with my nifty fifty and became very frutrated with white balance.

I generally shoot in jpeg (yea, I know I should probably start shooting RAW) and I usually use the Auto or Outdoors setting. The orange on both of these was so unnatural. The only WB setting that seemed to look "natural" was with Tungsten. I tried to use custom WB using a white sign nearby, but it wasn't any better.

I know I can improve this dramatically in PP, but it would be nice to "capture it as I see it". Is this unrealistic? Shoud I get an 18% grey card for custom WB?

What's the best way to get accurate WB?

I would love some input on this.


Here is the shot (gourds) with Auto WB (no PP):

I don't really like the shot, but it illustrates the WB issue.

[michaelb]

Here is a similar shot with the Tungsten WB setting: Much more accurate colors.

[michaelb]

Indian corn shot with auto WB looks fine to me:

[michaelb]

Here's another auto WB that looks ok to me:

[steveLe]

hmm im surprised the custom white balance did not work? it usually works well for me (using the s3is). if you dont mind, i played with your first photo. the first picture shows a fixed photoshop white balance. since i was not there for the shot, i just took wild guesses on where the highlights/whites were. the second shot is just a fixed up version of it. a more dramatic look and feel, but might be too unrealistic for you.

http://stevele.net/images/pumpy2.jpg

http://stevele.net/images/pumpy.jpg

maybe this helped?

[aparmley]

White balance . . . you don't have to shoot raw anymore to take advantage of using a Whibal - all you need is a whibal and the new Adobe Light room. . . but without that then you might need to take custom white balance shots or use a whibal and shoot raw if you want accurate consistant WB.

These shoots look underexposed - perhaps getting the exposure right would help these out.

[michaelb]

White balance . . . you don't have to shoot raw anymore to take advantage of using a Whibal - all you need is a whibal and the new Adobe Light room. . . but without that then you might need to take custom white balance shots or use a whibal and shoot raw if you want accurate consistant WB.

These shoots look underexposed - perhaps getting the exposure right would help these out.

Thanks for the input. You are right....they are underexposed a bit - I usually shoot at -1/3, but was my exposure was set at -2/3 for some reason tonight and didn't realize it until after I started viewing the EXIF data!!!

That being said I still think that my XT has trouble with accurately reproducing certain colors, especially orange.