Nikon 995 Auto white balance incandescent lighting

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.

It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting and took it off of Auto white balance.

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad as the first 995.

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

I see the same thing when using auto white balance on my 995. All images shot under incandescent lights with auto WB turn out orange. In light of similar complaints and the auto WB test results in the review on this site, it looks more like an inconvenient shortcoming of the 995 rather than a problem due to a defective unit.

-- BG

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Big Gulp said:

-- BG

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

John, You bet your going to get orange light from incandescents! Why would you expect not to? Have you ever seen what an uncolor-corrected color print looks like from a negative shot under incandescent light? Exactly the same! Auto white balance is not intended for incandescent shooting. Which is why there is a specific white balance setting for incandescents in the menu (it even looks like a little light bulb).Or you can do a WB preset if that doesn't work to your satisfaction, which actually measures the ambient light and gives you a full-on custom white balance.
Next time check here before taking your camera back.

Big Gulp, I don't think it's really a shortcoming as the condition has a very specific remedy right in the camera already.
Best Regards, FJBrad

Hello John,

In incandesent light, do a manual white balance. If you need to fix an important shot already taken, it can be fixed in photoshop. Major pain though.
Will

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Hi John,

Yep my first 995 was the same as yours, the auto W/B didn't seem to work. I compared it with my old Casio QV-2000 under the same lighting conditions and the Casio seemed to get the W/B right all the time in auto mode.

I called Nikon support and after e-mailling the comparison shots they suggested the unit may be faulty, I returned it to the dealer and we went through another four 995's which were exactly the same as my first, we also tried a 880 which was slightly better but still not as good in auto mode as either ths Casio or a Olympus 3040 we also tested.

I decided to keep my original 995 as the rest of the camera is fansastic. There was a a posting on this forum which suggested the auto W/B is selecting "Flash" correction when it detects the low light levels you would typically get in a tungsten lit room.

This seems like a possible reason except for the fact that even in a VERY bright tungsten lit room the W/B is still out. I have not found the bug to cause a problem however because as I said above the flash isnormally needed anyway and all of my indoor snaps under tungsten have been OK.

However I agree it would be nice if a 700 - 800 dollar/pound sterling camera could auto select the right correction.

Here comes firmware Ver 1.7 I guess !!!!!!

By the way mine is Ver 1.5

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Poor choice of words, FJBrad. It's more of a minor inconvenience since there is a readily available solution. But it would be nice if the camera's Auto WB (in A-rec mode) could somehow compensate for incandescent lighting conditions.

-- BG

FJBrad said:

Big Gulp, I don't think it's really a shortcoming as the condition
has a very specific remedy right in the camera already.
Best Regards, FJBrad

Click to expand...

I suppose that after all the negative (mostly speculative or exagerated) reports and speculation on the 995 before it even hit the street, it's only natural that when a new owner experiences problems, that they would immediately suspect that they got a defective unit or that the 995's as a whole are defective.

I have a theory about why Auto White Balance (AWB) on the 995 doesn't throw as much correction into an image as other DC's, incuding the 990. It is an improvement over previous models, and even vastly superior to Casio.

In order to understand why this is, one has to have an understanding of color theory and color correction. I spent many years at the helm of a Copal 6130 printer in a photo lab, and correcting color with this printer is directly analygous to WB correction on a DC.

Before I get to that, let me make the observation that our brains are constantly color correcting (AWB) raw ambient light data coming from our eyes. If you are sitting in an artificially lit room looking at your monitor right now, you'll notice that the screen appears neutral or even a bit blue compared to the monitor housing, the wall, and everything else in the room illuminated by incandescents. If you look down at that piece of white paper on your desk, it looks white. Now hold up that same piece of paper next to your screen. Does it look warmer now? Just as your brain automatically inverts the image your eyes send to it so everything looks right side up, your brain is constantly removing color casts to make things look more neutral, allowing you to differentiate between colors when an overall cast is present. If your brain didn't do this correction routine, you would be seeing exactly the same "orange" cast that is the subject of so much consternation and camera exchanging. My point is that the color cast or shift your describing is a more accurate record of the actual colors in the scene than what your eyes see. But it does look yucky. So the chore of color correction isn't to accurately represent the colors in a scene but is instead to make the colors more accurately represent what is eye-appealing or "neutral" by removing color casts that are actually there.Emulating what our brains see involves capturing every image as it would look under a neutral (daylight 5,500-6,500K) light source So when is it appropriate to remove a color cast and when is it not.

My Copal 6130 printer had an on board computer and color sensors that "looked" at every negative for color casts. If, for example it detected an overall red/yellow cast from an indoor shot without flash, so the scene had been illuminated by orange light, the color sensors would inform the computer of this, and the computer would tell the printer to leave the Yellow filter in the light path for more time, and leave the Cyan filter (compliment of red) in the light path a little less, during the exposure of the print. This neutralized the orange cast somewhat, but quite often, I would manually increase the amount of correction when I'd see this kind of negative come through. This computer correction routine in a photographic printer is very similar to AWB in a digicam.

These color correcting (actually neutralizing) systems work great when there is actually a minor overall cast. An example of this would be light reflecting onto a subject from green foliage, or a brick wall, or daylight passing through a colored awning illuminating the subject . Again, although undetectable to our eyes (brain AWB), these casts need to be neutralized by AWB or Complimentary filtration in a flim printer. But how does the camera know if a predominant color is a cast that needs neutralizing by AWB differentiated from a predominant color that is supposed to be there? It doesn't. Aye, there's the rub. AWB systems just aren't as smart as our brains in determining which casts to neutralize and which ones to leave uncorrected.

A very common color correction error is a scene where there is a lot of green foliage. Look at some of the prints you've gotten back from the 1hour lab that have a lot of green lawn , but also have a grey sidewalk or driveway. You will probably have a number of prints with Magenta (compliment of green) driveways and sidewalks. When I was printing and a negative like this came through, I would routinely correct the correction by removing the Magenta manually that I knew from experience the scanner/computer was putting in attempting to correct a cast that wasn't there.

On the DC/AWB side of things, the camera has no way of knowing when to neutralize a predominant color and when to leave it alone. So when you shoot a yellow flower that occupies most or all of the frame, AWB is going to shift the whole color balance to blue in order to neutralize the "color cast". Shoot a red flower and everything shifts to Cyan. So, what's the "fix"?

M-rec> menu> white balance> white balance preset. Using this feature, you will override AWB and actually measure the ambient light to tell the camera what grey, white, or neutral is supposed to look like. It then ignores any color casts or predominant colors and renders accurate colors, or more correctly speaking, colors that emulate what we think we are seeing.
See other post "when white balance won't work"
FJBrad

Big Gulp said:

-- BG

FJBrad said:

Big Gulp, I don't think it's really a shortcoming as the condition
has a very specific remedy right in the camera already.
Best Regards, FJBrad

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

BG, What would be nice would be if all incandescent lights were the same color or better yet if they were all daylight balanced (fluorescents, too). That not being the case, we're stuck with real world conditions that often give us horrible (photographically) ambient artificial light to work with.

AWB correction of a sufficient magnitude to neutralize incandescent light would mean that the next time we shot a picture with a lot of sky in it, the AWB would make the image yellow, and a picture with a yellow flower filling the frame would be shifted to blue, a brick wall would go to cyan. I would rather have AWB that takes care of minor casts, than have to listen to the whining on this forum about "bad color" from all of the other AWB failure that would occur if Nikon ramped up the AWB. Not to mention the flood of returned cameras that would follow.
FJBrad

FJBrad said:

I suppose that after all the negative (mostly speculative or
exagerated) reports and speculation on the 995 before it even hit
the street, it's only natural that when a new owner experiences
problems, that they would immediately suspect that they got a
defective unit or that the 995's as a whole are defective.
I have a theory about why Auto White Balance (AWB) on the 995
doesn't throw as much correction into an image as other DC's,
incuding the 990. It is an improvement over previous models, and
even vastly superior to Casio.

Click to expand...

I have to agree with all you have said, but you can understand that after owning four previous digicams the AWB of the 995 came as a bit of a shock.

As I said most if not all of my indoor pics have been taken under atificial light and the 995 has needed/prompted the use of the flash which has resulted in great pictures, even when left in AWB mode, although framing shots with the red/orange cast on the LCD is impossible.

However I still can't quite get my head round the fact that I need to always manually select either tungsten WB or perform WB custom adjustment when I want to shoot indoors without the flash

I have to ask, what was the point of Nikon putting the AWB feature on the camera if the automatic correction is so weak as to make almost usless in this every day shooting situation ???.

With all that said I have to point out that after explaining the "bug" to Nikon UK and sending them several pics they also decided that the unit could be faulty, even the guy in the shop was surprised when we went through his remaining four 995's and found them to be all the same (He offered me a refund).

But despite all this I still kept my 995 as its performance in all other areas has surpassed expectation every time.

Dave.

There will be situations where WB won't cut it because it is a global correction. Just as it is very easy to take care of an overall cast in PS, white balance, be it auto, preset, or other WB mode can handle all situation where an overall correction is needed. WB won't work in those cases where two different colored light sources are in play. On a sunny day, our eyes see fairly neutral or color correct colors in both the sunny areas and in the shadows (brain AWB). Although the sunny areas are indeed neutral, the shadows are being illuminated by a very blue/cyan light from the sky, and as such give it a color cast that is dutifully and accurately recorded in flim and by a CCD. Because AWB is a global correction, if AWB were to attemp to remove the cyan cast from the shadows by adding red, the sunny areas would take on this correction as well. The PS fix is to desaturate the cyan in the shadow areas.

Another very common situation is a weak flash in an artificially lit room. The color of the flash is a tad cooler than daylight, while the incandescent -lit background is going to be red/yellow . Set the WB to neutralize the background and your subjects in the flash are going to go blue/cyan. The only in-camera solutions if you want to flash are to get a strong enough flash to illuminate the background as well as your subject, or to try to match a gel filter (orange/red) to the ambient light and cover the flash with it, then WB preset to this ambient/flash light. The PS fix is not easy in this situation. It involves duplicating the image on a copy layer, correcting the copy to get the red out, and then masking to the foreground.

BTW, if shooting in slosync flash mode, because of the slower shutterspeed, the ambient light will have a greater color impact on the image, accentuating the orange cast from the incandescents (fluorescents). So, even though using flash, Incandescent or fluorescent WB settings may give you better results.
FJBrad

Hi Dave, It may be a glitch, or "bug" in the firmware settings. But it may also be that nikon dialed down the amount of WB in auto to respond to complaints of "bad color" from people shooting brightly colored, predominant color scenes where a complimentary color added by AWB resulted in innacurate color.

Using AWB on the 995 next to the 990, I can see less of this malcorrecting in the 995, so if it's a glitch, I'll take it. Color aberations from a bad AWB from a predominant color shot may be less apparent than a "weak" AWB in a shot in incandescent light.

It may be that it will come down to which group complains the loudest. But for those of us who, out of habit, avoid using ambient artificial light for photography, please, Nikon leave it the way it is.
I'm curious, did you shoot indoors without flash with your film camera too?
Regards, FJBrad

Dave said:

Hi John,

Yep my first 995 was the same as yours, the auto W/B didn't seem to
work. I compared it with my old Casio QV-2000 under the same
lighting conditions and the Casio seemed to get the W/B right all
the time in auto mode.

I called Nikon support and after e-mailling the comparison shots
they suggested the unit may be faulty, I returned it to the dealer
and we went through another four 995's which were exactly the same
as my first, we also tried a 880 which was slightly better but
still not as good in auto mode as either ths Casio or a Olympus
3040 we also tested.

Click to expand...

-------

So what you are saying, is that the Casio and Olys are "Point and Shoot" cameras, that make all the decisions for you, and the the Nikon CP995 "Makes" you decide a few things for yourself?

Please Nikon, leave that "Problem", alone!

Donn

Dave said:

Yep my first 995 was the same as yours, the auto W/B didn't seem to
work. I compared it with my old Casio QV-2000 under the same
lighting conditions and the Casio seemed to get the W/B right all
the time in auto mode.

I called Nikon support and after e-mailling the comparison shots
they suggested the unit may be faulty, I returned it to the dealer
and we went through another four 995's which were exactly the same
as my first, we also tried a 880 which was slightly better but
still not as good in auto mode as either ths Casio or a Olympus
3040 we also tested.

I decided to keep my original 995 as the rest of the camera is
fansastic. There was a a posting on this forum which suggested the
auto W/B is selecting "Flash" correction when it detects the low
light levels you would typically get in a tungsten lit room.

This seems like a possible reason except for the fact that even in
a VERY bright tungsten lit room the W/B is still out. I have not
found the bug to cause a problem however because as I said above
the flash isnormally needed anyway and all of my indoor snaps under
tungsten have been OK.

However I agree it would be nice if a 700 - 800 dollar/pound
sterling camera could auto select the right correction.

Here comes firmware Ver 1.7 I guess !!!!!!

By the way mine is Ver 1.5

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Dave Chamberlain said:

The second Nikon 995 does the same thing.

Click to expand...

After reading all of the other posts, I agree it is inherent in the 995.

This does not make it correct, when you put AWB in the camera it should work, especially a Nikon product.
I have also used a Nikon 880 and did not see this problem.
All that said, I am going to keep this 995, I think it is a fantastic camera.
I am sure Nikon will correct this with a firmware update.
Thanks
John

Donn said:

Dave said:

Hi John,

Yep my first 995 was the same as yours, the auto W/B didn't seem to
work. I compared it with my old Casio QV-2000 under the same
lighting conditions and the Casio seemed to get the W/B right all
the time in auto mode.

I called Nikon support and after e-mailling the comparison shots
they suggested the unit may be faulty, I returned it to the dealer
and we went through another four 995's which were exactly the same
as my first, we also tried a 880 which was slightly better but
still not as good in auto mode as either ths Casio or a Olympus
3040 we also tested.

Click to expand...

-------

So what you are saying, is that the Casio and Olys are "Point and
Shoot" cameras, that make all the decisions for you, and the the
Nikon CP995 "Makes" you decide a few things for yourself?

Please Nikon, leave that "Problem", alone!

Donn

Click to expand...

Donn,

Amen brother, and thank you! For the others, the reason I'm going to great lengths to hopefully educate and inform is partly selfish. If Nikon's listening, they might just decide that forcing their customers into M-rec to adjust WB to tungsten light is to bothersome, and may tweak the setting in AWB in response. This would mean that in every non-incandescent shooting situation, those of us who would like to get daylight balanced accurate color, will have to do a WB preset manually for many more situations that contain a predominant color influence than we do now. Plus the fact that we will have to correct the corrections made by a faulty decision by the camera.
FJBrad

John Lutz said:

John Lutz said:

The second Nikon 995 does the same thing.

Click to expand...

After reading all of the other posts, I agree it is inherent in the
995.

This does not make it correct, when you put AWB in the camera it
should work, especially a Nikon product.
I have also used a Nikon 880 and did not see this problem.
All that said, I am going to keep this 995, I think it is a
fantastic camera.
I am sure Nikon will correct this with a firmware update.
Thanks
John

Click to expand...

Very thoughtful reply, John
Check please!

I've been reading your replies with great interest FJBrad. Thanks for taking the time to compose such detailed responses. The snippet below makes a lot of sense now and I can appreciate a little more what these engineers have to take into consideration when developing digicam hardware and software.

Oraange incandescent auto-WB shots or not, the 995 is an amazing piece of equipment!

-- BG

FJBrad said:

This would mean that in every non-incandescent shooting situation,
those of us who would like to get daylight balanced accurate color, will
have to do a WB preset manually for many more situations that
contain a predominant color influence than we do now.

Click to expand...

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

Click to expand...

And it does appear to be one of those annoying shortcomings of the current Firmware since it is obvious to anyone with a CP990 that this should NOT be the case. The 990 does a really good job of keeping the white balance tolerable under the wide range of sub-incandescent through broad daylight. As did the 950 before it.

John Lutz said:

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Click to expand...

It's not a single camera failure. I believe it is a bug. There are now several "bugs" showing up and the Firmware 1.7 or 1.8 will eventually fix them all.

• The Auto WB bug.
• The Shutter Priority failure to computer 1/2000 sec and adjust the aperture correctly bug.
• The VGA Basic folder over-run bug (only collects 200 shots, starts new folder at 0001)

---What others might we collect?

-iNova

John Lutz said:

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Peter, why not start one of those threads, a bug collecting thread. But only report NEW bugs, not having 10 people reporting the same known bug. Then perhaps Nikon could be presented this bug report from dpreview and hopefully they'll fix them all.

Petra

Peter iNova said:

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

Click to expand...

And it does appear to be one of those annoying shortcomings of the
current Firmware since it is obvious to anyone with a CP990 that
this should NOT be the case. The 990 does a really good job of
keeping the white balance tolerable under the wide range of
sub-incandescent through broad daylight. As did the 950 before it.

Member said:

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Click to expand...

It's not a single camera failure. I believe it is a bug. There are
now several "bugs" showing up and the Firmware 1.7 or 1.8 will
eventually fix them all.

• The Auto WB bug.
• The Shutter Priority failure to computer 1/2000 sec and adjust

the aperture correctly bug.

• The VGA Basic folder over-run bug (only collects 200 shots,

starts new folder at 0001)

---What others might we collect?

-iNova

Member said:

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Peter,

I second Petra's thought.....and be sure to put that dumb new menu setup right up somewhere near the top.

(okay, I know it's not truly a bug per se, except we gotta bug them about making the menu make sense again!!)

Scotty B.

PowerPet said:

Petra

Peter iNova said:

John Lutz said:

I am now on my second Nikon 995, I sent the first one back because
it would not auto whire balance under incandescent light, the
monitor was very "WARM" looking under auto white balance.
It looked fine if I set the white balance to incadescent lighting
and took it off of Auto white balance.

Click to expand...

And it does appear to be one of those annoying shortcomings of the
current Firmware since it is obvious to anyone with a CP990 that
this should NOT be the case. The 990 does a really good job of
keeping the white balance tolerable under the wide range of
sub-incandescent through broad daylight. As did the 950 before it.

PowerPet said:

I have talked to Nikon tech support LEVEL 2 and they admit to
seeing this "WARM" look on auto white balance under incandescent
light.

I have received my second Nikon 995, it looks as if it too has the
same problem, I will have to wait until dark to see if it is as bad
as the first 995.

Click to expand...

It's not a single camera failure. I believe it is a bug. There are
now several "bugs" showing up and the Firmware 1.7 or 1.8 will
eventually fix them all.

• The Auto WB bug.
• The Shutter Priority failure to computer 1/2000 sec and adjust

the aperture correctly bug.

• The VGA Basic folder over-run bug (only collects 200 shots,

starts new folder at 0001)

---What others might we collect?

-iNova

PowerPet said:

Has anyone else seem this "WARM" look under auto white balance with
incandescent lighting ?

thanks
John

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I fnd that un incandescant lighting, the manual white balance, though vastly superior to the auto WB, is still a tad warm.