Manual white balance vs auto, which do you lean on more now?

I used to just set white balance in post, saved time on set. But after shooting a wedding in Sedona last October, the auto WB made all the red rocks look washed out. Now I dial it in on the camera every time. Anyone else change their workflow like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice_barnes352h ago

A buddy of mine shoots real estate and he stopped using auto WB after a shoot in a fancy house with those warm Edison bulbs everywhere. The auto kept trying to cool everything down and the photos came out looking like a doctor's office. He sets a custom kelvin now for each room and says it saves him so much time in editing.

briannguyen24m ago

Read this article from a lighting company's blog the other day that totally backed this up. They tested auto WB in rooms with mixed color temperatures and it basically guessed wrong every single time. Your buddy is smart to set a custom kelvin because the camera's sensor just gets confused when you have warm bulbs and natural light coming through a window at the same time. That's why real estate photographers swear by grey cards too, you get a consistent starting point for every room. It's wild how much time people waste in post trying to fix colors when you can just nail it in camera.