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White balance at sunrise?

I am interested in capturing the subtle color palette seen in the sky just before and after sunrise. I have been leaving my white balance setting on AWB and I am not satisfied with the result. I have tried modifying the WB in the raw converter, but I have not stumbled upon the tweak that will move it from garrish to ooh. Does anyone have a successful strategy?
 

Paul Caldwell

New member
Not to sound overly simple, have you tried shooting a grey or white card at the same time?

Shoot it raw, as then you change the WB per the card. You can leave the camera on AWB, then use your raw converters WB tool to click on the card, then set this to the WB of the series.

Best way I know of.

Paul C.
 

Don Lashier

New member
Nathaniel Alpert said:
I am interested in capturing the subtle color palette seen in the sky just before and after sunrise. I have been leaving my white balance setting on AWB and I am not satisfied with the result. I have tried modifying the WB in the raw converter, but I have not stumbled upon the tweak that will move it from garrish to ooh.

Which camera? Which raw converter?

- DL
 
Paul Caldwell said:
Not to sound overly simple, have you tried shooting a grey or white card at the same time?

Shoot it raw, as then you change the WB per the card. You can leave the camera on AWB, then use your raw converters WB tool to click on the card, then set this to the WB of the series.

Best way I know of.

Paul C.
Paul,
I have done that. I am trying to reproduce the subtle colors of the predawn sky, the pinks, purples and blues that often tint the clouds and the sky. My thought is that the gray card will not directly register this information. So, please be more specific about how to do it.
 

Don Lashier

New member
Nathaniel Alpert said:
I am using Canon 5D. And I have both RSP and PS/CS2. Of course, I have tried grey card, but that does not get me there.

I don't get up early enough for sunrise but take a lot of images around sunset and WB was always a challenge until my 1D where AWB generally gives very satisfactory results. But newer canons lack the separate wide-field sensor so I can imagine they don't do as well, particularly with longer lenses.

A white-card balance will do nothing but drain the ambience you are seeking right out of the shot. It might provide a reasonable tweak starting point, but so will AWB normally.

Tweaking WB in the RC is an art the ease of which is very dependent upon the controls provided by the RC in question. I use C1 and with the early versions it was a lost cause but with later versions quite doable - the trick is to coordinate the two controls (temp and tint). Bear in mind that the Kelvin reading is typically reversed from what you expect.

- DL
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Paul Caldwell said:
Not to sound overly simple, have you tried shooting a grey or white card at the same time?

Shoot it raw, as then you change the WB per the card. You can leave the camera on AWB, then use your raw converters WB tool to click on the card, then set this to the WB of the series.

Best way I know of.

Paul C.

Whenever there is a non-standard lighting, ie not "daylight" 5000 degrees Kevlin or "Daylight" 6500 degrees Kelvin, for example, with a colored gel over one of your lights, one needs a grey card reading. One is taken in the light one wishes to reference, daylight. Using this in your RAW processor will correct just to bring the colors to what would be scene in that daylight. It will largely neutralize effects incandescent lights or reflection from green trees etc. One needs to know also the color temperature for the distribution of light hues beyond neutral grey. This is based on the color temperature of the light and it represents the relative distributions of all wavelenths (ie colors) of light coming from the sky at that particular time of day as a reference.

Light Source Color Temperature
Candle Light 1500 K
Sunrise / Sunset 3200 K
Tungsten Light Bulb 3400 K
Overhead Sun at Noon 5500 K
Overcast Sky 6500 - 7500 K
Open Shade 9000 - 20,000 K

However, should one do this at sunset, one would be correcting away the color hue on the grey card and so subtract those hues from the whole precious image, even the lovely sky itself.

A way around this would be to use two other layers in photoshop and then add a percent of these according to taste.

In one layer, process the file by setting the actual color temperature (by measuring or from the table above) in the processing software.

In another layer use a picture of a grey card taken say say noon at the same location where those sunset pictures are taken or of the subject without the added color gel. These are all uncorrected colors. Your baseline with the special added or natures magic colors at sunset/dawn colors as intact as possible.

This can be added as an optional layer in PS CS2 to allow the amount of this color to be decreased to taste or design needs.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
You want richer colors, add a curves layer and simple set to "Multiply" and then bring down to tastei usually to around ).5 to 2% or according to taste.

For further effect, add a very slight S curve in an additonal curves layer.

Asher
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Two steps:

1. Don't white-balance a sunrise/-set or other effects shot [like night]! Set your camera to Auto or Flash.

2. Use your eyes on the monitor! Curves, levels [both for individual channels], tone mapping, whatever the tool, look at what you are doing, especially if your sunsets/-rises show several colours.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The "Auto" will only affect jpg files. RAW need separate adjustment according to your taste, however, as noted above, a grey card exposure in that desirable perfect light will remove that light quality you have waited/worked to get perfect!

Asher
 

Don Lashier

New member
Asher Kelman said:
The "Auto" will only affect jpg files.

But it will provide the settings for the default rendering - which can be quite useful, particularly in cameras with external WB sensors like the original 1D and 1Ds where those settings cannot be recovered at conversion time unless shot with AWB.

- DL
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
If one is really fussy, one can use a color meter and then have that color temp reading as a reference for processing. Who actually uses one?

Asher
 
Nathaniel Alpert said:
I am interested in capturing the subtle color palette seen in the sky just before and after sunrise. I have been leaving my white balance setting on AWB and I am not satisfied with the result. I have tried modifying the WB in the raw converter, but I have not stumbled upon the tweak that will move it from garrish to ooh. Does anyone have a successful strategy?

Set the white balance to Daylight and leave it there. Let the camera capture the colors you see. You will get and see blue shadows. You will get and see pink and yellow skies clouds. I shoot daylight whitebalance with daylight, flash, and when dragging the shutter and cannot imagine using white balance to correct away the colors my eyes see.

This is simply a good starting point and I can usually tweak it to match my vision without much difficulty.

my $0.02,

Sean
 
I suspected that I was asking a difficult question, but I was also hopeful that someone actually had a canned solution. There have been a number of thoughtful suggestions. but, so far, I don't believe that we have arrived at a reliable workable solution. I would like to give a summary and commentary on what has been said in this thread. I will place excerpts from responders in bold type, followed by my comments. I invite you to correct, extend or clarify these points.


The “simple ideas” of direct white balance expressed by Paul C and others

“Not to sound overly simple, have you tried shooting a grey or white card at the same time?

Shoot it raw, as then you change the WB per the card. You can leave the camera on AWB, then use your raw converters WB tool to click on the card, then set this to the WB of the series.

Best way I know of.

Paul C.”


are too simple. My experience is that a “click” white balance off the grey card will render the grey card as perfect grey, but it will produce the wrong white balance for the scene that is (to be) dominated by the distant sky.

Don Lashier suggested not to white balance off a reference, like a grey card, but to work with color temperature and tint during raw conversion.


This is what I will call the guess and try method. Success depends critically on the tools proviided in the raw converter, as well as having a really, really well-calibrated monitor and color-managed workflow. Though I have good calibration, I find this approach really difficult to pull off because the color balance and tint controls are too crude.

Asher Kelman gave a mini tutorial on balancing lighting and color temperature. He also recognized implicitly the difficulties of this approach in the field.


I didn't think the table of color temperatures was very useful, except as a very rough guide, because the light is changing very quickly and I think success will require real time measurements. I took away from Asher's discussion that I might try to do two white balances: 1. Maybe something like a diffused reading from the sky but in the direction of sunrise. and 2: Perhaps a "local" white balance to capture the near field ambience. Then to combine two raw conversions in photoshop, perhaps with masks or something like that.

We also had suggestions to measure the color temperature and just to eyeball it.

I don't have a color meter to try this and I am not sure i would know what to do with the data.

So, overall I would rate the thoughts about dealing with mixed color temperature, expressed by Asher, as the most promising, but I repeat that we don't yet have a resipe to solve this technical point.
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
There cannot be a canned solution as there is no default, norm or whatever you call it. Every sunrise/-set is different in its colours. No automation possible.
 

Dave New

Member
Set camera to AWB, rebalance (if necessary) to Daylight in RAW converter

Actually, I think you missed Sean's suggestion to just set the camera white balance to Daylight, and let the colors fall where they may.

My slight alternate to this is to leave the camera on AWB and shoot RAW. Depending on what the camera's auto white balance algorithm makes of the scene (including how much of the scene may contain other objects that may or may not appear tinted by the sky) it may or may not render by default a reasonable fascimile of the scene as you may remember it.

At this point, I have available within the RAW converter, Sean's choice: Try setting the raw conversion white balance to Daylight, and see how that looks. One or the other (camera default AWB, or forcing Daylight in the RAW converter after the fact) usually gives useable results.

I've found that by using this heuristic, I can get a pretty good hit rate of decent-looking color rendition for sunrise/sunset shots.

31712568.jpg
 
Dierk Haasis said:
There cannot be a canned solution as there is no default, norm or whatever you call it. Every sunrise/-set is different in its colours. No automation possible.
You slap on a daylight white balance and you automatically have a consistent (per RAW converter) interpretation of the colors before your eyes. I cannot comprehend why people suggest using a AWB to correct away the color casts before our eyes which are part of what make sunrise and sunset so special. Correcting the white balance is what strips away the subtle tonalities of sunrise and sunset. i.e.,
"Oh, look at yellow/red light, yielding such warm vibrant tones on that dormant grass turning them into amber waves of grain. And do not forget the lovely warm tones on the clouds."
And while my example is of the golden hour rather than dawn or dusk, the same factor applies. Correcting the white balance balances away the colors you see.

SPE22812_RSE_01.jpg


A simple golden hour example image.
I liked the color and perspective, I am unsure If I like the image itself.

Looking at the above example image in terms of color (which is straight daylight white balance modulo a touch of shadow highlight filter to reduce contrast), would you seriously suggest using AWB or a grey card to balance away the warm golden highlights? If so, then why? I just cannot imaging doing that. My eyes saw the warm golden highlights and all these white balancing processes are intended to eradicate such color casts. Yet those casts are real and can be seen by the trained eye.

Heck, it is an overcast day and looking at the window right now the green leaves I see everywhere look blue-green rather than the normal green. Even the reds have blue undertones (i.e., are cool). That is how they look and white balancing away those casts created by the light almost always looks wrong to my eyes.

some thoughts,

Sean
 
Why Change The Light

[new text]Post edited to show clearer example from original RAW file. One image was replaced and new text is denoted as such. You can find the originally posted image at: http://www.envisagement.com/opf/SPC05188c_example.jpg[/new text]

Another example image.


SPC05188_RSE_01_Vision.jpg

Mt. Shuksan Reflected In Picture Lake During Twilight
[new text]This is a replacement image rather than the old sloppy corrections.[/new text]

This one was 10 seconds at f/2 likely 20 or 30 minutes after sunset. Daylight white balance plus tweaking to suit my vision. [new text]In this case it was a mixture of shadow highlight and selectively increasing saturation of only the saturated tones to bring the overbright blues into the realm of the dark saturated tones I witnessed.[/new text]

Why in the world would you want to destroy the subtleties of the blues by white balancing them away?
[new text]
SPC05188_RSE_01_AWB.jpg

Mt. Shuksan at Twilight Using AWB
I agree the details are perhaps clearer, but all subtlety of tonality is lost.

[/new text]

[/pseudo removed] The greens are still there and if I remember correctly it involved tweaking to bring the greens out of deep shadows. But daylight white balance was where I started as that is the closest to what my eyes saw (truth be told, my eyes saw mostly dark and I am aware of the excessive correction to the tones of the sky about the trees that touch sky but it was a handy example).[/pseudo removed]

I am just bewildered by all this lets correct away what we see via white balance rhetoric when the OP asked how to retain the subtleties of tonality rather than how to correct them away. Take the above image and use the middle grey eyedropper in levels and use it on the white glaciers on Mt. Shuksan to correct away that awful blue color cast and you will see the reality of AWB or grey cards for landscapes. You will get warm foreground tones and a dull cyan sky. But that is not what the OP is looking for.

[new text]With the replaced version you get ever worse results using the middle grey eyedropper in levels. And just so you understand where I am coming from here I am including the daylight whitebalance version below.
SPC05188_RSE_01_straight.jpg

Straight Daylight White Balance Without Correction To My Vision

In this variant you can see a reasonable but overexposed rendition of the scene. In reality it was deep twilight and the midtones of this image should be shadows. While curves can be used to correct for that, the reality is curves overcompresses the shadows losing details while shadow highlight allows darkening the overbright areas while retaining contrast in the shadows. The usage of a selective saturation boost brings out the greens bringing the final image closer to what I experienced.
[/new text]

more thoughts,

Sean
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sean, this is the general rule people should get in their head. A grey card balance REMOVES any color cast, bad or good. Your processor doesn't know the difference.

You have "got it"; most people not!

I often have scouted the area before hand and take the gray card shot, which I may or may not end up using, in that perfect light. I save the settings: "Hay stacks 11 am"

When I get my sunset picture, "Hay stacks, sunset" I use the stored setting, "Hay stacks 11 am" for the color balance., so the picture is only tweaked to a very minor degree, if at all. If the change is good, I use it, otherwise not.

With models, one MUST use the grey card before one adds the color gels over lights or else that color and all other colors will be ruined!

Sean could you post the original "sunset" version of the above "corrected" shot and I will move it into your post above!

Asher
 
Asher Kelman said:
A grey card balance REMOVES any color cast, bad or good.
Worth repeating.
Asher Kelman said:
I often have scouted the area before hand and take the gray card shot, which I may or may not end up using, in that perfect light. I save the settings: "Hay stacks 11 am"

When I get my sunset picture, "Hay stacks, sunset" I use the stored setting, "Hay stacks 11 am" for the color balance., so the picture is only tweaked to a very minor degree, if at all. If the change is good, I use it, otherwise not.
Interesting idea. I just leave the camera set to a daylight white balance 99% of the time and use a calibrated display for judgement. Since with Canon Flash WB is a variant on AWB and not a true flash white balance I just use daylight WB with flash. The one place I find using a corrected white balance in camera is available light in of doors at night with people in the shot.
Asher Kelman said:
With models, one MUST use the grey card before one adds the color gels over lights or else that color and all other colors will be ruined!
I agree with skin tones that getting the tones "right" matters when the model is the subject. I do not believe in correcting skin tones when the model/s are an element of the landscape and are there as an added dimension rather than as the subject.
Asher Kelman said:
Sean could you post the original "sunset" version of the above "corrected" shot and I will move it into your post above!

I edited in (with annotation and no removal of text) a "corrected"/my vision, AWB, and Daylight version for you. :eek:)

enjoy,

Sean
 

Don Lashier

New member
Sean DeMerchant said:
I cannot comprehend why people suggest using a AWB to correct away the color casts before our eyes which are part of what make sunrise and sunset so special.

It all depends on how good the camera's AWB is. Prior to my 1D I typically used "daylight" or "cloudy" for evening shots as otherwise the evening light got drained. But my 1D is remarkably different as evidenced by the test I did shown below. The original 1D and 1DS are remarkable in that they have an external color temp meter. That and the camera algorithms set AWB to actual readings rather than neutralizing everything. This is one of the features I love most about my 1D and can't imagine why Canon decided to do away with it in newer models. They claim that AWB from the sensor frame is as good or better but I don't see how this can be.

Landscapes are very sensitive to WB settings and my 1D does so well on AWB that I rarely tweak, even sunset shots. One day I inadvertantly left the camera on "daylight" and was devastated because I ended up with a few hundred shots that had to be tediously tweaked. Occasionally it does screw up, sometimes wildly, for instance if your thumb is over the sensor or you are shooting down.

Another reason that many 1D/1Ds shooters always shoot AWB is that with these cameras the external WB reading is lost (not saved) if you use a preset. otoh it's simple to select one of the presets at raw conversion time if it (rarely) proves better.

Early on I did an evening light (7:45 pm) white balance test with my 1D. Camera AWB is by far the best and closest to actual perception. Daylight and cloudy at least leave the grass warm, although not "golden" as it actually appeared, but totally screw up the ocean and sky color. As expected the greycard balanced shot is sterile. FWIW C1 auto-balance was very close to camera AWB, but in general I find C1's auto-balance somewhat unpredictable so rarely use it.

Bottom line is that results are going to very with each camera model and raw converter. A good AWB algorithm will not drain colors but many are not very good. You need to do some tests to see what works best.

wbcomp.jpg


- DL
 
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Don Lashier said:
It all depends on how good the camera's AWB is. Prior to my 1D I typically used "daylight" or "cloudy" for evening shots as otherwise the evening light got drained. But my 1D is remarkably different as evidenced by the test I did shown below. The original 1D and 1DS are remarkable in that they have an external color temp meter. That and the camera algorithms set AWB to actual readings rather than neutralizing everything.

Don,

Thank you for a rational and illustrative answer. <smiling> It still leaves the rest of us plebians and body upgraders in the dark, but it gives me a great reference point.

I really do appreciate a serious answer to what may appear to be a spurious question which was not.<smiling again>

Lacking the in camera WB measurement I will stick with daylight (modulo tungsten/incandescant light where daylight is way too yellow).

thanks,

Sean
 

Don Lashier

New member
I should also note that Nikon has obstinately refused to divulge their AWB data (presumably defending the market share of their RC that they give away) so afaik no third-party converter will correctly interpret AWB from Nikon DSLRs.

On an unrelated note, note that WB greatly affects contrast, and truest WB often (always?) corresponds with greatest contrast. I'm not sure why (where's Ethan when we need him?).

- DL
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
Don, not quite right, Adobe and Nikon are working together in so far as Nikon [belatedly] hands over a mini-SDK to Thomas Knoll and his team to get AWB values into ACR 3.
 
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