6 replies to this topic

[Headstill]

I am shooting with a D5200 with the EXPEED 3  internal software.

 

I am curious if anyone adjusts any of their cameras internal settings as their normal workflow. For instance does anyone use the ISO noise reduction, or bump up the sharpness? I have read that some think the Nikon auto White balance looks a little green? My thought is to shoot RAW with camera settings at 0 with no adjustments and do all editing in my PC software but am curious to hear from the more experienced.

 

Also before a shoot, is their any advice for calibrating things like white balance or a grey color that will be used in the editing software?

 

Like would it make sense to hold out a thicker white sheet of paper and take a photo at the location to fine tune the white balance in editing?

 

Thanks to all who helped me over the weekend 

 

 

[TBonz]

Simple answer for me is no, I really don't make any in camera changes other than shutter, aperture and ISO.  I haven't really noticed any issue with the white balance which I normally have set to Auto as I haven't felt the need to change it.  I have shot in a number of gyms that have lights that cycle so an image that is captured at one point in the cycle has a different WB than one shot at other points in the cycle.  As near as I have been able to tell from thousands of images in those gyms, the body gets it correct, but it does not change it during a group of images.  As an example, the lighting cycles fast enough that your eye doesn't notice it.  Without going through and confirming, my experience is that when shooting a group of images in continuous mode, the camera does not adjust the WB with the shutter release pressed so you can see the lighting cycle on some images which won't have the correct WB.  That is generally fairly easy to correct in post processing.  In general, the tint of the image varies from good WB and on either side depending on where the shutter fired during the light cycle.  Some gyms didn't have that issue (depended on the lighting) and some it was more bothersome than others...

 

I never felt a need to shoot a paper or whatever to fine tune since most of what I deal with has some white that I can use to work with.  Either the home or the visiting team is wearing primarily white uniforms (varies with the sport I'm shooting) so no real need to "bring my own".  I also prefer as natural a look as I can get on most of my images and I tend to process those images fairly soon after shooting...maybe it is me but I try to adjust things to what I saw than to some specific level of white or whatever.  I'm guessing you could probably see that in some of the images I've posted.  Another example:

 

 

The white balance on that shot is "As Shot" in LightRoom and Auto in camera.  There are several of "shades of white" in the image above.  Note that other than slight cropping, there are NO edits to this image.  The white on the front of the helmet is different than the white on the chin strap and the white of the jersey is different from both as well.  The white on the jersey has a variety of shades from white to dark gray depending on the light that is hitting it.  Just because I felt it an interesting test, I converted to B&W in LightRoom, with no other changes...

 

 

While the jersey looks quite white to me in the color image and a bit gray to me in the B&W, it looks correct based on what I saw on the field.  On another forum I have seen people suggest the white balance was off on similar images.  Who knows, someone here may tell me that for the image above, but whether or not it is "correct" to me is based on what I saw and not some specific measurement.  Hope that helps!

 

[Merco_61]

I sometimes use a modified NL picture control with lowered contrast and saturation to get a histogram that better reflects what can be made from the NEF. This is safe to do as Lightroom doesn't read the picture control in the file anyway. This is usually most useful in harsh light where the histogram tends to show clipping far too early. 

 

To get good WB in difficult lighting I shoot a Colorchecker chart and profile the light captured by the sensor in X-rite's ColorChecker Passport software. I then shoot with AutoWB and apply the profile in post if I feel that the AutoWB has got it wrong. A grey card can be useful if no Colorchecker is available. As a third option, a Melitta white coffee filter is better than nothing. Office stationery is not recommended as there are whiteners added to the paper and these reflect light strange. This can give a weird cast to the WB that is worse than the camera's auto setting.

[Ron]

By the way, you don't need to shoot RAW in order to change white balance in post processing. Both ACR and Lightroom will allow you to tweak WB in jpgs and even offer an 'Auto' mode which will often do a fairly good job. Personally, I use Auto WB about 95% of the time and then make any necessary adjustments in LR/ACR. Of course this isn't foolproof and sometimes a slight tint will slip by. Usually, it's blue or cyan when I'm processing images shot outside. The nice thing about LR/ACR is that you can go back and redo the image if you find something later that's not to your liking. I've never felt the need to mess with Hi ISO noise reduction on any of the cameras I shoot with. Ditto for sharpness control.

 

Before all the RAW only shooters start throwing their pitchforks, I'll admit that if you want the most control, you need to shoot RAW.

 

--Ron

[morticiaskeeper]

I shoot everything in RAW and only change camera setting to Black and White if I'm doing Black and White shots. If there is any doubt, I capture everything and then sort it later.

[Thumper]

I don't really adjust any of the camera "settings" as a normal part of my workflow.   I have it set to auto-whitebalance, and that is all that is auto (besides focus).   I set the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed manually for every shot.  I have not used the High ISO Noise Reduction on my current camera body yet because it does a really nice job of handling higher ISO's.   Any shots that the auto-balancing may make a mistake on get corrected in post.  (I use LR and PS).  I shoot everything RAW to both cards. 

 

Depending on what I am shooting, I will adjust the focus mode from Single to Continuous, and the same with the shutter actuation.  It may get switched from single to continuous.  I know there are "shooting banks" in the camera that I can preset most of that, but in the time it takes me to access the menu and change shooting banks, I can already have my settings done manually.  (Were I a professional/more serious photographer that did not have the luxury of time to do such things, I would most likely utilize such features to a greater extent).  As it is, I am just an enthusiastic hobbyist.  I don't have to rely on my photography for a living.  It is strictly a personal pleasure activity for me.  So take my input with that in mind.  

[TBonz]

I was editing photos yesterday when my wife told me there were some deer in our yard.  Most here know that's not unusual, so I got up and peaked out the window.  There were two (young doe and young buck) right up next to the fence foraging in the rain for food near a bird feeder we have.  I watched for a minute and decided to pull out my Nikon 1 to grab a few photos.  I took a few as it was getting darker and they continued to hang around the area.  Eventually I decided to grab my D4 / 200-400 as it was way too dark for the N1.  I actually got some good ones with the N1 before it got too dark.  It was really too dark to shoot by this point, but figured I'd give it a shot...this image was shot at ISO 12800, f4 and 1/160...Less grain, but the deer didn't cooperate in posing for me this time...so, not a great image, but I bring it up here due to the WB discussion as I messed with the WB in LR and got an interesting result...

 

 

Above is the image I played with.  As I said it was dark...I cropped it slightly and added some to the exposure but made no other changes to the image.  WB is unchanged from camera (LightRoom setting = As Shot).  It definitely looks like what I saw when I shot the image and how I expected it to look once processed...

 

For grins I tried all of the other "canned" WB settings in LR.  The Auto setting in LR gave the best result other than As Shot to me, closely followed by the Flash setting.  All the rest looked unnatural.  For this test, I didn't mess with any Custom setting since that would vary depending anyway.  Here is the same image as above with the only change being that the WB setting was moved from As Shot to Auto in LR.

 

 

Not sure if it will help you or not, but I found it interesting.  I think the whites are a bit "whiter" in the Auto image and the effect seems to provide more contrast / saturation...I've tried similar in the past with different lighting to start and thus different results (both positive and negative results).  Just thought I'd share...