White balance

I have been having trouble with one particular image for A4 - the skin tone is blueish and I'm quite good in Lightroom but am having trouble getting it the skin to look less blue without wrecking the whole image.  I couldn't work out if this was white balance or exposure.  Another student said if I shot in RAW it shouldn't matter what white balance I used as I can set it in post to get it right.  I guess I'm a bit confused.  From what I've been learning if you get it right in-camera then you have less work to do in post.  I know from past experience setting WB correctly in-camera when working with strobes makes a big difference although of course it's correctable in LR if shot in RAW.  And I once had my camera set to daylight, I think, but was shooting under a tree or something like that and the images all came up a bit yellow and it took me ages to get the WB right, I was really annoyed with myself.  When shooting commercially now I always shoot in AWB unless using strobes without any daylight, in which case I set it to flash.  This makes life a lot easier in Post.

The WB on my Fuji images I have noticed sometimes can be a bit green but I wonder if this is because my exposure isn't quite right rather than the WB.

Anyway, I have searched up RAW & settings and this article is quite useful.

White balance

Today I realised that problems I am having are to do with white balance - I think really need to start setting it myself probably in certain situations.  Not sure what to do now... reshoot or try to fix it in Lightroom, which of course I've done already and with most images it's not a problem but it is in a couple I think....

Grrrrr.... what to do????

The Colour of Light: Judging colour temperature 2

Take a similar situation to the last one and shoot three kinds of picture but vary the WB setting 3 times so you end up taking 9 images.  Compare and say which you prefer.

I prefer the AUTO on the first set and the last but he daylight in the middle set.  I think the camera does a good job of WB actually although in the past I have felt it was a bit yellow and green at times, but perhaps that was to do with some sort of colour cast.  The difference between daylight and AUTO is negligible in some images but the ones of my son at the end it is more marked.  Incidentally, I hope my mother will forgive me for using such a wide angle to take these but I am very pleased to finally be getting on with these exercises as I stalled slightly for a bit.

AUTO AV f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB Daylight f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB Shade f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB AUTO AV f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB Daylight AV f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB Shade - AV f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB Daylight - AV f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB Shade - AV f4 ISO 200 1/120s

WB AUTO - AV f4 ISO 200 1/125s

The Colour of Light

Find a subject you can move around and does not have a strong colour (face for instance), in clear weather (oh dear...) take three photographs at different times of day; one in full sunlight during the middle of the day, one in shade at the middle of the day, one in sunlight when the sun is close to the horizon.

Make sure WB is set to daylight rather than AWB.

The following two images are quite similar because despite waiting for a sunny day the winter sun is pretty weak weak and watery.  It's not the brilliant blue sky I need to demonstrate the difference in light as things stand - if such a day ever arrives in time I will replace photo No 1.  Both are pretty yellow actually.  Very low sunlight to be confirmed.

AV f4 200 ISO 1/1400s - bright sunlight

AV f4 200 ISO 1/125s - shade