Technical white balance question for CANON users.

[cprice]

Question for Canon users:

First, my equipment is a 5D MKiii with 105mm L macro. I typically shoot at 1250 ISO, f/9, and around 1/80 sec.

When shooting coral where their colors are brought out under heavy blues, how do you set your white balance? Do you calibrate the custom white balance with an expo disc or something similar? Do you manually set the WB to 10000k and adjust from there in post?

I have had success and issues with both methods of WB adjustment. For the custom WB, my photos will turn out EXTREMELY red as the camera has issues registering the deep blue of the "calibration shot". Using the second method of manually setting the WB to 10000k, the photos still turn out fairly blue and the sensor misses out on the other colors that are present.

As it stands, the best images come from a combination of using the manual WB to set the temp to 10000k, and then setting the WB shift to "A9" which is furthest away from the blue spectrum. This produces an image that can accurately depict all colors with a slight touch of adjustment in post.

Any thoughts to getting better colors straight from the camera would be greatly appreciated.


Also, secondary question: when shooting in RAW, does anyone find that Lightroom will revert the image to a much "blue-er" temperature because it maxes out at 10,000k for light temp? I don't get that issue if I'm shooting in JPEG, but I also give up quality which I would like to hold on to.

 

[Steve Ruddy]

Question for Canon users:

First, my equipment is a 5D MKiii with 105mm L macro. I typically shoot at 1250 ISO, f/9, and around 1/80 sec.

When shooting coral where their colors are brought out under heavy blues, how do you set your white balance? Do you calibrate the custom white balance with an expo disc or something similar? Do you manually set the WB to 10000k and adjust from there in post?

I have had success and issues with both methods of WB adjustment. For the custom WB, my photos will turn out EXTREMELY red as the camera has issues registering the deep blue of the "calibration shot". Using the second method of manually setting the WB to 10000k, the photos still turn out fairly blue and the sensor misses out on the other colors that are present.

As it stands, the best images come from a combination of using the manual WB to set the temp to 10000k, and then setting the WB shift to "A9" which is furthest away from the blue spectrum. This produces an image that can accurately depict all colors with a slight touch of adjustment in post.

Any thoughts to getting better colors straight from the camera would be greatly appreciated.


Also, secondary question: when shooting in RAW, does anyone find that Lightroom will revert the image to a much "blue-er" temperature because it maxes out at 10,000k for light temp? I don't get that issue if I'm shooting in JPEG, but I also give up quality which I would like to hold on to.

Try ISO 100 F 8-16 float the shutter speed. This will require a tripod and all pumps turned off.

I have the same camera and have tried everything you mention but I like RAW capture with AWB and if I don't like the color I adjust in LR. BTW Lightroom WB will adjust up to 50K. For me this will usually make a heavy blue shot look like daylight. FWIW if you want to go even further try Capture One Pro it has an amazing WB sample tool that will take it way farther than LR and even it's own manual slider.

Yes RAW shouldn't be any better color wize it will just be way easier to color correct. Try using adobe standard in LR for you calibration.

 

[cprice]

Try ISO 100 F 8-16 float the shutter speed. This will require a tripod and all pumps turned off.

I have the same camera and have tried everything you mention but I like RAW capture with AWB and if I don't like the color I adjust in LR. BTW Lightroom WB will adjust up to 50K. For me this will make a heavy blue shot look like daylight. FWIW if you want to go even further try Capture One Pro it has an amazing WB sample tool that will take it way farther than LR and even it's own manual slider.

Yes RAW shouldn't be any better color wize it will just be way easier to color correct. Try using adobe standard in LR for you calibration.

Thanks for the reply Steve,

When adjusting WB in Lightroom, it I am tying to edit an image shot under straight blues, 50000k just looks like a muddied up blue image, never really preserves the color of the coral. This is especially the case if the coral in question has blue in it.

As far as calibration, what are you speaking of? I can't seem to find anything within the settings that would allow me to choose something related to color space other than the external editor.

Collin

 

[Steve Ruddy]

Check this out https://petapixel.com/2017/08/22/demystifying-camera-calibration-panel-lightroom/

You won't be able to get nice color shooting under solid blue light. Make life easy and add white light any way you can.

 

[finnerman]

I have been experimenting with this for a couple of months now and here is what I figured out. I too use a 5dmkIII and find it much more capable of white balancing to blue light than the lower end canons, such as a 70D if no color filter is used. With a color filter, most any camera can be whipped into shape.

I would absolutely suggest doing a custom white balance. You may use an expo disk if you have one or a white piece of paper will be fine as well. For the best looking images with the most color pop, I would advise against the use of any white light. I am using Radion Gen 3s and turn up all the blue channels all the way. I then remove all white and add in 15% each of red and green. I then turn the total power down to 65 watts or so to avoid burning up my corals. Playing with the red and green channels can help tweak colors for items in the iridescent and non-iridescent orange color range. I was able to get very accurate color reproduction in greens, yellows, blues, purples with this technique alone.

The issue with this technique comes when you photograph oranges, reds, pinks, and non-iridescent warm colors. They always tended to have too much of a magenta cast that I was not able to adjust out in Adobe Camera Raw. This is very likely due to the fact that we are working at the very far edge of the capability of the camera. The camera's sweet spot is 5600K which makes sense as that is the color temp that 90% of images will be taken under. The majority of the rest will be taken under 3000K (incandescent) which is way down at the other end of the spectrum from where we want to work. These cameras are not really tuned to our lifestyle.

The solution, I have found, is to use color gels to push what the camera is seeing back into the camera's comfort zone a bit. Using a warm gel in front of the lens does 2 things, it pushes the recorded image's color closer to the camera's comfort zone and help take advantage of the reason why corals fluoresce. Fluorescence is caused by a phenomenon called Stokes Shift. Look it up, but basically, the color we see under UV or blue light is shifted further up the spectrum than it should be. You can also research Exciters and Barrier Filters to learn more.

The desired effect of Exciter/Barrier Filter photography is to show only the fluorescence which shows glowy thigs with a mostly black background. This is cool looking but not usually what we want in photographs of our tanks. To get around this, I would not recommend glass filters as they are too strong at filtering out blue, whereas gel filters are a little more forgiving and will let some of the background show through. Another way we want to move away from Exciter/Barrier photography is that we do not want to light with an extremely narrow bandwidth. By opening the bandwidth up we force more of the background elements to show.

Adding white can help but washes out those rich colors that we all enjoy under the blue lights late in the evening, so I would strongly recommend against adding any. My goal when I started experimenting with my process was to reproduce a visual match in my images to what I actually see in my tank. The process is not perfect but gets me very close.

Another thing I would recommend is to get very familiar with the White Balance Shift option in the camera's menu. This is due to the fact that the custom white balance actually takes out too much blue. with the white balance shift, you can add some back in. I do this by eye as I am taking the picture. I literally add in blue and usually magenta until what is on the back of my camera looks reasonably like what is in front of me. When these two match in camera, I know that my post processing will be much easier.

I personally like the look I get when using a Rosco Light Straw (RS1111) gel with this technique. I would very much recommend that you get a sample swatchbook and try various gels of similar colors. You can find 3' x 6" books here:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...50SBCNG0306_Large_3x5_Cinegel_Swatchbook.html
These are fun to play with and can produce great effects with experimentation.

 

[eschulist]

I too have found using RAW straight out of the camera very difficult to use. Even white balancing in camera does nothing to the RAW image, which is kind of expected but sad that when imported into Lightroom has the kelvin maxed out at 50,000 and cant be pushed further to look correct.

For the best images Ive done it two ways.

White balance manually using something white placed near the tank, setting it to that color and then taking my pictures in Raw+jpeg. Usually the jpeg is the only one usable as it bakes in the white balance I set up. To avoid images that remove too much ill set my manual white balance to my tank with the blues dialed way back and then when taking my actual photos set the blue value higher or back to what I had it at before.

The other way is with a very pale yellow filter. This cuts out a larger portion of the blue spectrum and Im usually able to use the RAW image, but it sometimes suffers from looking artificial.

If anyone knows a way to get true RAW photos into lightroom that accounts for manual white balance and doesnt max out the Kelvin slider Im all ears.

 

[Steve Ruddy]

FWIW I have Canon 5D Mark III, IV and 80D. They all perform equally when shooting under blue light. I always shoot Raw as if I want to tweak color in post RAW will gives me way more latitude than jpg. I also use AWB and have experimented with all other WB methods but AWB always does what I need it to do. Obviously using AWB, or any WB method while shooting under only blue light, will not give you an image that can be processed in post to look like it was shot under daylight. Here are a few examples.

Light was at my normal midday setting. 40UV/70V/80DB/100RB/20G/5R/34W I used Adobe Standard camera calibration, AWB and LR WB settings were left as shot.

This was shot under pure blue light with a yellow filter. I used Adobe Standard camera calibration, AWB and LR WB settings were left as shot. Warm tones were tweaked to add red.

Light was at my normal midday setting. 40UV/70V/80DB/100RB/20G/5R/34W I used Adobe Standard camera calibration, AWB and LR WB settings were maxed at 50K.

Shooting RAW gives you the most flexibility in post processing. WB settings in post can only go so far, so if your out of range of you want to achieve then add more white light or blue depending on what you want to end up with. White light will not wash out your colors however too much will ruin any florescence your trying to capture. Also if your colors aren't as saturated as you would like, lower your exposure setting.

 

[Steve Ruddy]

Another thing I would recommend is to get very familiar with the White Balance Shift option in the camera's menu. This is due to the fact that the custom white balance actually takes out too much blue. with the white balance shift, you can add some back in. I do this by eye as I am taking the picture. I literally add in blue and usually magenta until what is on the back of my camera looks reasonably like what is in front of me. When these two match in camera, I know that my post processing will be much easier.

I haven't done this but I think it's very good info and worth experimentation.