Help with White Balance on Nikon D7000 please

[pietpetoors]

I have a Nikon D7000 with a Tamron 28-300 lens.

I battle with the white balance. The worst is when I try and photograph products for my online store. I use a white background and photograph the product indoors with natural light, close to a windown. The colour always comes out very wrong. I tried the sun setting, the cloudy setting, the shade setting but all of them are totally wrong.

I played around with the function which tells it how it must take it's lightmeter setting. I found that if I set that to the setting where it takes the average for the whole window then the white balance is also more accurate. Does these two work together.

Sometimes when I photograph outside and have the white balance setting on sunshine, then also the colours come out a bit wrong. This especially happen if it is a nice day outside with the lagoon's water nice and blue and I trying to photograph windsurfers or yachts.

Is there any way that one can calibrate the white balance?

[FDavel]

I am never happy with the standard white balance settings. I don't think they apply to all situations. My solution is to put it in auto, shoot in RAW and use the white balance slider in Lightroom until I am happy with the colour. I am pretty sure you can customize the white balance on your camera, but someone else can give you a better answer as to exactly how. On a side note, Lightroom is a worthwhile investment, no matter what kind of photography you do.

[pietpetoors]

Thank you. At the moment I do correct it in Photoshop but it is a shlep to correct each photo you took. What do most of you use for these colour corrections? Also Photoshop?

Eish, I really miss the days of old fashioned film. I nether had a problem then. I must say the last time I really enjoyed photography was then I was shooting with film.

[pietpetoors]

O ja, I can manual adjust the colour correction of my camera. I tried that but even that sucked. I can see that if I spend much more time with that I will in the end get a better result that with the standard settings. But the way I adjust the WB manually is very much trial and error. That is why I wondered if there is a standard procedure to do it. Remember with film cameras we used a grey card to determine the shutter speed and f-stop, is there perhaps a way you can use a card to calibrate the white balance?

[Leo Theron]

1. Excellent colour (In camera) = Grey card + Manual WB + Correct Procedure (RTFM)

2. Excellent colour (Processed images) = Include White, Black, Grey card in test shot, balance using dropper...

[Philip Meyer (El Capitan)]

Hi

The most secure way would be to use a custom white balance setting for each unique shoot.
Is there a "custom white balance" function on that Nikon? (I Just saw they call it PRESET WHITE BALANCE)
If so check your camera's manual - it should not be too difficult.
(Unfortunately I use Canon, so I'm not sure about Nikon's settings)

[Forgiss - Sean Nel]

1. Excellent colour (In camera) = Grey card + Manual WB + Correct Procedure (RTFM)

2. Excellent colour (Processed images) = Include White, Black, Grey card in test shot, balance using dropper...

And if you want automated, exact colour under all conditions. Colourchecker Passport

[Leo Theron]

And if you want automated, exact colour under all conditions. Colourchecker Passport

Agree

[kobuspotgieter]

I suspect your problem is more one of a colour cast than white balance. Natural light always come reflected from somewhere and the material that reflects the light will the color the light, creating the cast which will result in "wrong" colors. If you have to use natural light for your products photography, make sure the light is reflected from as white as possible surfaces.

[pietpetoors]

Kobus, I have a Pentax K110 and an old Fujifilm S7000 and neither of them manage to stuff up the light colour as good as the Nikon. I have been photographing my products indoors in a sunny room for many years with those two.
So I doubt that it can be a colour cast problem.

I managed to use the preset white balance correction using a grey card I made myself and it worked very well. The colour is much more accurate now.
Now I have another question, if one have to correct the white balance for each different lighting condition, what must you do if you want to photograph a sunset? If you do a colour correction then it will surely not record the rich colours.

[Leo Theron]

Kobus, I have a Pentax K110 and an old Fujifilm S7000 and neither of them manage to stuff up the light colour as good as the Nikon. I have been photographing my products indoors in a sunny room for many years with those two.
So I doubt that it can be a colour cast problem.

I managed to use the preset white balance correction using a grey card I made myself and it worked very well. The colour is much more accurate now.
Now I have another question, if one have to correct the white balance for each different lighting condition, what must you do if you want to photograph a sunset? If you do a colour correction then it will surely not record the rich colours.

Petoors from Langebaan,

Kobus has hit the nail on the head… that is the colo(u)r cast nail.

I went to you website and had a look at your pictures. There are various shots in the shade, with different colour casts clearly visible. There are different backgrounds with exposures that are totally fooled by the light subjects and backgrounds.

Exposure with a Grey Card:

- Used correctly it should give you good colour balance, but it cannot correct for the different colour casts that will arrive unwanted on your scene from the tree on the left (a bit of green) the sky (a bit of blue) and the red opposite wall (a bit of pink - or is your wall yellow?) - What Kobus said.

- You cannot make your own grey card - Sorry. A Grey Card is a precision product with very specific spectral response. The same can be said for a XRITE Colorchecker Passport. The colour squares on these devices also fade, so they must be replaced periodically.


To prevent colour cast and difficult WB, you need to control your light. My proposal is:

- Get a grey card, two Nikon SB-600 flashes.

- Take a big cardbox box. Remove flaps. Remove one side. Line with WHITE paper. (Spray Glue, sheets of A4 printing paper) In the two opposite sides cut a window, about A4 size, line with tracing paper. Flashes OUTSIDE, opposite the 'windows' set to SLAVE, trigger with your camera flash - which is set to commander. Subject inside the box. Expose the grey card as the standard in place of the subject. Then subject in box - SHOOT.

Background? Get sheet of white, sheet of grey and sheet of black...

No flashes? Two reading lamps, white balance with grey card.


And that sunset? Set the WB to SHADE Only put the sun in the frame when the sun is nearly on the horizon…

HTH

[pietpetoors]

Thanx Leo, will give that a try