White Balance Question

[greghaag]

Trying to work out the kink's of a new camera and software. This should be properly white balanced, but for some reason visually appears slightly off to me? Anyone that is view from a calibrated monitor would you mind give me your thoughts.
Thanks in advance,
Greg

[David Grover]

What and how are you using to balance, Greg?

Card?  By eye?  Preset?

[greghaag]

David,
I am using an 18% grey card, not sure what my issue is? 
Thanks for your help!
Greg

[aikbo]

My first impression is the skin of this beauty is greenish. So it appears not to be white balance but tone.

[mauro risch]

Hi  Greg,
It is always very interesting to see how other fellow photographers do their color balance and
how they perceive things in front of a monitor.
I tried something a bit more "scientific" with your image.
I've opened it on CS5 and searched for the white reference on the girl's eye(surrounded by the red line).
With the info eye dropper, the readings are absolutely neutral.
C  36  M 36  Y 36  K 1
I think, at the end of the day, you have to make it look good to your own way of seeing things.
It is all very relative. Even with a calibrated EIZO million bucks monitor, you will have the interference of
the window lights, ceiling lights, your clothes reflecting on the screen, etc...
The image looks pretty neutral to me.
I like skin tones a bit warmer than the real thing, but that is my Brazilian nature. I know Europeans like the skin tones very cool.
I hope it helps,
Merry Xmas,

Mauro
maurorisch.com

[greghaag]

Mauro,
I really appreciate your insight! If you don't mind sharing what is your preferred method to color balance?  Here is where I am at this point. I have been color balancing off of the grey portion for image 1, I switched to the white for my color balance on image 2 and it looks much better to me. (no warming done, trying to get my color right first) Anyone have any thoughts?
Thanks for everyones help!
Greg

[mauro risch]

Greg,
I have done a few monitor calibration workshops throughout the years. Since 1994 at the PhotoPlus NY events at the Javvits Center.
Radius pressviews, Sony Artisans, Eizos, you name it. They are all incredible devices.
What I normally do is going to a source I know, like the X-rite passport color checker when shooting food for example.
Interior and Architecture shots just will not obey any of these rules for me.
The grey tones give me a good reference for the color balance, but most of the time, I use multiple sources of light combined, window daylight + tungsten, etc...
I try to keep it nice to my eyes. It is my way of seeing things. I like things warm and saturated.
I read the color balance either on Phocus or some times on ACR. After that I will tweak a bit here and there to find my satisfaction point.
It is probably more intuitive at this point than mechanical readings. That's just me.
Cheers
Mauro

[Alex Maxim]

Hi Greg,

when you use the WB picker in phocus, mind that it takes only a single pixel on the screen into consideration. Because every photo has some digital noise, every pixel has slightly different color balance. If you click a few times at about the same area of the image but at different pixels you'll get different WB values.

I asked Hasselblad for a feature to give an optional bigger sample size for the picker 5x5 or 10x10, but it hasn't happened yet.

For now what I do is try to zoom out the image as far as I can, even resize the phocus interface to make the image appear as small as possible and then click with a picker. The pixel where you pick will have it's color value much closer to the average value because it was approximated by zooming away. Now move over with the picker all over the gray card and check if the RGB values are consistently equal.

But if it's a portrait, I usually adjust white balance by eye, because the real skin tones and the ones I want them to be are not the same

Hope it makes sense,
Alex

[DavidH]

Hi Greg,

I've had less than perfect balance from using 18% grey cards. Maybe it is a quality of the card or something. A white sheet of paper seemed better than the 18% card I had used.

I'm assuming that you are using a Hasselblad digital camera and Phocus...

The best results I've had came from using and X-rite product called Color Checker Passport (approximately $100). They include software that works nice. I normally get by with just using the grey card. It seems much more white than 18%. All you do is take one frame of you subject with the card then place the neutralization tool on the gray patch and you are done. This gives you balance based on your lighting. Once you get comfortable you can create a Phocus profile for you own studio lighting (i.e. beauty dish, ringlight, octobox mid day sun, etc) and you are done.

X-rite and others have good monitor and printer calibrators that will make your life much easier giving you end-to end color. Then you can take control of your color for artistic reasons

When I use this product with my Nikon the colors look the same as photos taken with Hasselblad only the image quallity is different.

Hope that helps...

David

[greghaag]

Greg,
I have done a few monitor calibration workshops throughout the years. Since 1994 at the PhotoPlus NY events at the Javvits Center.
Radius pressviews, Sony Artisans, Eizos, you name it. They are all incredible devices.
What I normally do is going to a source I know, like the X-rite passport color checker when shooting food for example.
Interior and Architecture shots just will not obey any of these rules for me.
The grey tones give me a good reference for the color balance, but most of the time, I use multiple sources of light combined, window daylight + tungsten, etc...
I try to keep it nice to my eyes. It is my way of seeing things. I like things warm and saturated.
I read the color balance either on Phocus or some times on ACR. After that I will tweak a bit here and there to find my satisfaction point.
It is probably more intuitive at this point than mechanical readings. That's just me.
Cheers
Mauro

Mauro,
Thank you for explaining your process, I really appreciate it!
Greg

[greghaag]

Hi Greg,

I've had less than perfect balance from using 18% grey cards. Maybe it is a quality of the card or something. A white sheet of paper seemed better than the 18% card I had used.

I'm assuming that you are using a Hasselblad digital camera and Phocus...

The best results I've had came from using and X-rite product called Color Checker Passport (approximately $100). They include software that works nice. I normally get by with just using the grey card. It seems much more white than 18%. All you do is take one frame of you subject with the card then place the neutralization tool on the gray patch and you are done. This gives you balance based on your lighting. Once you get comfortable you can create a Phocus profile for you own studio lighting (i.e. beauty dish, ringlight, octobox mid day sun, etc) and you are done.

X-rite and others have good monitor and printer calibrators that will make your life much easier giving you end-to end color. Then you can take control of your color for artistic reasons

When I use this product with my Nikon the colors look the same as photos taken with Hasselblad only the image quallity is different.

Hope that helps...

David

David,
Thanks for sharing, I have had the same experience with the 18% grey cards.  I have resorted to the same process of white or Color Checker Passport.  When I was shooting this I shot at home with my Elinchrom Quadras and did not have my Color Checker Passport.  After having this problem I went to the studio and got my color checker and plan on reshooting with that to set up my preset.
Thanks again,
Greg

[greghaag]

Hi Greg,

when you use the WB picker in phocus, mind that it takes only a single pixel on the screen into consideration. Because every photo has some digital noise, every pixel has slightly different color balance. If you click a few times at about the same area of the image but at different pixels you'll get different WB values.

I asked Hasselblad for a feature to give an optional bigger sample size for the picker 5x5 or 10x10, but it hasn't happened yet.

For now what I do is try to zoom out the image as far as I can, even resize the phocus interface to make the image appear as small as possible and then click with a picker. The pixel where you pick will have it's color value much closer to the average value because it was approximated by zooming away. Now move over with the picker all over the gray card and check if the RGB values are consistently equal.

But if it's a portrait, I usually adjust white balance by eye, because the real skin tones and the ones I want them to be are not the same

Hope it makes sense,
Alex

Alex,
Thanks for you insight! I felt a bit out of my element working with a new software program and working out my white balance presets.  I have been using Capture One pro for the last several years and it is taken a little longer than I expect to get adjusted to Phocus.  I love the H4D-40 and I think I am getting my feet on the ground with Phocus now.
Thanks again,
Greg

[SteveK]

Greycards are good references to get an idea what "grey" could be. I think I already tryed any kind of greycard (cheap / expensive / brands / noname etc.), even the Hasselblad Qcard. What I can tell is:
"grey is relativ"
Sometimes it is slightly warmer, more blue, tending to green or whatever. Buy 5 pro class greycards and you will get 5 different "colors" of grey. Sometimes I used several cards in the same picture and selected a kind of "middle" tone.
If you need exact colors the closest thing is to use a color checker with several color samples and calibrate the camera.

Today I know my grey cards and I use two f them for reference and typically adapt it after whitebalancing in RAW converter (so I do not use the white balance of the RAW converter but change it slightly). My favourite card tends to warm so I adjust it slightly colder.

some grey cards:
(as you can see, the upper tends to blue, the lower is very low, the hasselblad definately tends to green and the left one is a photo-background grey which tends to red)
All look very "grey" but when you whitebalance to each card you will see totally different results!

[NickT]

Great post thanks Steve.

I tend to rely on my macbeth colour checker for grey, it is always kept out of the light (in a sleeve) and assistants are warned to never touch the surface.
I'm lucky to be in studio most of the time and I know which of my backgrounds are neutral and which aren't.

I used to have a Nokia phone that was perfectly neutral, worked great as a grey card

Nick-T