what's up with awb?

juanmaasecas · Apr 7, 2022

JBrack22 said:
This is what my pictures look like, pretty much always. All I do is shoot cRaw and convert using DxO Raw Converter, there is nothing else I ever do to them., (I am way to lazy and busy to try to do anything else). I am too lazy to even resize and sharpen for the internet so they might not be perfect, (not meant to be anyway). Viewing them on the browser they do not look as nice as on photo viewer on my computer. I have a calibrated monitor and when I print they look identical to what I see on the screen. Do they look ok to you? Or do you still see weird AWB color? I wish you would post some so we can see how your pictures look, it could very well be something is up with your camera.

I think you’re mentioning the wrong person, I like Canon AWB…

JBrack22 · Apr 7, 2022

Yea screwed that up, sorry. I need to stay away from the site for a while, it just drive me crazy sometime.

gimp_dad · Apr 7, 2022

wats0n said:
Trust me I get it. But when you post things like this in on forums people will tell you your wrong, say it doesn’t matter if your shoot raw blah blah blah. The truth is there is a color cast issue with the R cameras and it’s frustrating. My R tends to shift towards green quite a bit, it tends to ruin skin and wash out color. It’s hard even in Lightroom to correct for it. Coming from Fuji I always had spot on white balance and beautiful tones and colors. It’s much harder with Canon to achieve the same level of quality. I greatly prefer Canon to Fuji from an ergonomics, menu, design standpoint. But I think Fujis lenses and image quality are superior.

Sounds like you are saying you are having color problems with the combination of Lightroom and R system camera bodies. Anytime you have a problem with color or lighting in a raw editor you are referring to the editor first and the camera second since the major influence is the translation since raw data does almost nothing to dictate color cast (other than chromatic range and dynamic range which we already know are among the best with the R5).

While the Lightroom integration with the R, R6, R5, R3 has improved a lot in the last several months, it still is not as good as the Nikon integration with Lightroom. But the first thing to check is the DPP results if you want to see what Canon intended the colors to be based on the AWB settings you use.

yerach · Apr 8, 2022

gimp_dad said:
wats0n said:

Trust me I get it. But when you post things like this in on forums people will tell you your wrong, say it doesn’t matter if your shoot raw blah blah blah. The truth is there is a color cast issue with the R cameras and it’s frustrating. My R tends to shift towards green quite a bit, it tends to ruin skin and wash out color. It’s hard even in Lightroom to correct for it. Coming from Fuji I always had spot on white balance and beautiful tones and colors. It’s much harder with Canon to achieve the same level of quality. I greatly prefer Canon to Fuji from an ergonomics, menu, design standpoint. But I think Fujis lenses and image quality are superior.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you are saying you are having color problems with the combination of Lightroom and R system camera bodies. Anytime you have a problem with color or lighting in a raw editor you are referring to the editor first and the camera second since the major influence is the translation since raw data does almost nothing to dictate color cast (other than chromatic range and dynamic range which we already know are among the best with the R5).

While the Lightroom integration with the R, R6, R5, R3 has improved a lot in the last several months, it still is not as good as the Nikon integration with Lightroom. But the first thing to check is the DPP results if you want to see what Canon intended the colors to be based on the AWB settings you use.

i agree on the color part, but leave dpp alone! try capture 1 and you'll see wonders!

yerach · Apr 8, 2022

juanmaasecas said:
What lenses are you using?
I LOVE Canon Colors and AWB and it’s the main reason I moved from Sony.
It tends to be a bit on the cool side in daylight and I love it because it gives some blue tones in the shadows and creates a nice color contrast. With Sony everything had like a yellow filter all the time… Canon is a bit too warm sometimes under artificial light, but the Colors look just true to the scene to my eyes.

Recently I started using awb-w and I’m liking it a lot, especially because it fixed my main problem:

I have two Tamron zooms: 17-35 and 35-150. Whilst the former is neutral or even a bit on the cool side, the second has a warmer tint (using manually the same wb). When using the normal AWB, the 35-150 sometimes is too warm, because the camera recognises the scene warmer than it is (because the lens has a warm cast) and makes it even warmer to preserve the mood… however, now using the AWB-W, this lens shows much better Colors now out of the camera, and this setting equalises much better the color output with all my lenses (I have a mix of Tamron Canon and sigma…)

do you suspect the 28-70 f2 and 70-200 f2.8 optical masterpieces? i don't, that's why i shoot primarily with them

and yes, sony is quite a bit worse.... (the a1 is a bit better btw) but that doesn't help me very much does it?

Sittatunga · Apr 8, 2022

yerach said:
juanmaasecas said:

What lenses are you using?
I LOVE Canon Colors and AWB and it’s the main reason I moved from Sony.
It tends to be a bit on the cool side in daylight and I love it because it gives some blue tones in the shadows and creates a nice color contrast. With Sony everything had like a yellow filter all the time… Canon is a bit too warm sometimes under artificial light, but the Colors look just true to the scene to my eyes.

Recently I started using awb-w and I’m liking it a lot, especially because it fixed my main problem:

I have two Tamron zooms: 17-35 and 35-150. Whilst the former is neutral or even a bit on the cool side, the second has a warmer tint (using manually the same wb). When using the normal AWB, the 35-150 sometimes is too warm, because the camera recognises the scene warmer than it is (because the lens has a warm cast) and makes it even warmer to preserve the mood… however, now using the AWB-W, this lens shows much better Colors now out of the camera, and this setting equalises much better the color output with all my lenses (I have a mix of Tamron Canon and sigma…)

Click to expand...

do you suspect the 28-70 f2 and 70-200 f2.8 optical masterpieces? i don't, that's why i shoot primarily with them

and yes, sony is quite a bit worse.... (the a1 is a bit better btw) but that doesn't help me very much does it?

yerach · Apr 8, 2022

these two were taken in the same spot a couple minutes apart, and believe me both kids have perfectly normal skin tones (no one of them is dracula's kid...), there's absolutely no blue cast from anywhere nearby, just trees and grass (i don't have permission to upload the complete pics here), these are untouched cr3 files cropped using preview into jpegs (i didn't notice any difference on screen), if this is consistent and lovely in your opinion, good luck!

and oh! excuse the snotty nose.... (it didn't come to the client that way, don't worry)

--
canon at hand nikon at heart

gimp_dad · Apr 8, 2022

yerach said:
gimp_dad said:

wats0n said:

Trust me I get it. But when you post things like this in on forums people will tell you your wrong, say it doesn’t matter if your shoot raw blah blah blah. The truth is there is a color cast issue with the R cameras and it’s frustrating. My R tends to shift towards green quite a bit, it tends to ruin skin and wash out color. It’s hard even in Lightroom to correct for it. Coming from Fuji I always had spot on white balance and beautiful tones and colors. It’s much harder with Canon to achieve the same level of quality. I greatly prefer Canon to Fuji from an ergonomics, menu, design standpoint. But I think Fujis lenses and image quality are superior.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you are saying you are having color problems with the combination of Lightroom and R system camera bodies. Anytime you have a problem with color or lighting in a raw editor you are referring to the editor first and the camera second since the major influence is the translation since raw data does almost nothing to dictate color cast (other than chromatic range and dynamic range which we already know are among the best with the R5).

While the Lightroom integration with the R, R6, R5, R3 has improved a lot in the last several months, it still is not as good as the Nikon integration with Lightroom. But the first thing to check is the DPP results if you want to see what Canon intended the colors to be based on the AWB settings you use.

Click to expand...

i agree on the color part, but leave dpp alone! try capture 1 and you'll see wonders!

Haha. Just to clarify, I'm not advocating to use DPP4 as the primary raw editor. Just that it's the first check to verify the color Canon is implying with one's setup. It's a good way to investigate which profiles and AWB modes one prefers from Canon.

I haven't tried capture 1 in a long time but may give it another shot. Thanks for the recommendation! As of now I'm able to get the results I'm looking for with LR and have it entrenched enough in my workflow that switching wouldn't be easy for me.

John Photo · Apr 8, 2022

To me, these don't seem to be very good examples regarding your concern on inconsistency. The lighting on the 2 faces is very different. And, apparently the "shade" on the second face is likely from the green grass and trees you mention. Several images of the same face in the same lighting taken minutes apart would allow better judging of consistency.

Canon_Guy · Apr 8, 2022

yerach said:
Canon_Guy said:

Since I shoot RAW only, in camera WB is not a concern for me.

Click to expand...

that's true, but editing 100 shots all with different flaws (i can't even get an indication by the awb's decision), ouch!

and also it's much nicer to have at least partially usable footage out of camera.

i guess every system has it's achilles heel (a d850 doesn't happen in every tech generation)

Well, the usual procedure is that before editing you firstly choose pictures to keep and postprocess and only then postprocess them. And post processing does not mean only to fine tune the WB but much more. The WB part takes just a fraction from the rest. No issue from my point of view.

Canon_Guy · Apr 8, 2022

yerach said:
these two were taken in the same spot a couple minutes apart, and believe me both kids have perfectly normal skin tones (no one of them is dracula's kid...), there's absolutely no blue cast from anywhere nearby, just trees and grass (i don't have permission to upload the complete pics here), these are untouched cr3 files cropped using preview into jpegs (i didn't notice any difference on screen), if this is consistent and lovely in your opinion, good luck!

and oh! excuse the snotty nose.... (it didn't come to the client that way, don't worry)

Well, both pictures will require quite strong postprocessing to get a good looking result so the WB adjust is just a small part of it.

Also large portions of the green grass and its color reflections together with the sky and ts reflections do not make the AWB job the easiest.

When a color accuracy is a must, it is good to use something like X-Rite Color Checker. Not only it helps a lot with the correct WB but it also helps to maintain correct relations between colors by calibrating the color profile of the camera.

yerach · Apr 9, 2022

it's a pity i can't share the entire shots, but as i said these kids were sitting in EXACTLY the same spot, the lighting seemed the same to me through the entire 15/20 minutes i was there, and there was NOTHING that should have changed/influenced the lighting, and the awb numbers themselves are far apart, these are merely the last photos i had seen a bad effect with and were still on my card, stowed in my library (on an exHDD) are many more examples, and to say all of them had some whacky lighting occurrence in them (that i haven't seen once in 13 years shooting nikon)....

again i'm not coming to say something here is unfixable, and yes these photos as many others came a long way until they reached the client's hands anyhow, BUT i would just prefer normal precise awb, that does what it's meant to... is that too much to ask for?

yerach · Apr 9, 2022

have a look what i answered JohnPhoto

you're both 100% right, and these solutions are much of what i do in practice, BUT working as i would like with awb, is a pain...

Tristimulus · Apr 10, 2022

yerach said:
gimp_dad said:

wats0n said:

Trust me I get it. But when you post things like this in on forums people will tell you your wrong, say it doesn’t matter if your shoot raw blah blah blah. The truth is there is a color cast issue with the R cameras and it’s frustrating. My R tends to shift towards green quite a bit, it tends to ruin skin and wash out color. It’s hard even in Lightroom to correct for it. Coming from Fuji I always had spot on white balance and beautiful tones and colors. It’s much harder with Canon to achieve the same level of quality. I greatly prefer Canon to Fuji from an ergonomics, menu, design standpoint. But I think Fujis lenses and image quality are superior.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you are saying you are having color problems with the combination of Lightroom and R system camera bodies. Anytime you have a problem with color or lighting in a raw editor you are referring to the editor first and the camera second since the major influence is the translation since raw data does almost nothing to dictate color cast (other than chromatic range and dynamic range which we already know are among the best with the R5).

While the Lightroom integration with the R, R6, R5, R3 has improved a lot in the last several months, it still is not as good as the Nikon integration with Lightroom. But the first thing to check is the DPP results if you want to see what Canon intended the colors to be based on the AWB settings you use.

Click to expand...

i agree on the color part, but leave dpp alone! try capture 1 and you'll see wonders!

Do never judge any RAW converter by the default settings.

Just learn how to use Lightroom properly.

You can get pleasing color from any RAW converter by tweaking the settings. We all see color differently and that is why there is no single solution to please everyone.

The bottom line is: if you are serious about color do not use AWB.

drsnoopy · Apr 10, 2022

yerach said:
yerach wrote:
BUT i would just prefer normal precise awb, that does what it's meant to... is that too much to ask for?

You can’t have a “normal precise AWB” - the whole point of AWB is that it isn’t a single, precise colour temperature. The name says it all - *Automatic* white balance. The Kelvin temperature and tint are determined by the cameras processor, depending on the colour balance in the scene, so will inevitably vary. If you want the same colour balance across a shoot, use a single white balance (preset or custom) or a grey card.

yerach · Apr 10, 2022

precise and normal doesn't mean always the same, but it does mean true to the scene's look, awb that gives 2 shoots in the same conditions dramatically different tints isn't precise and isn't normal....

thunder storm · Apr 10, 2022

I could be easily wrong, but maybe it helps to use face detect AF to get pleasing AWB in stead of single point AF.

zzip · Apr 10, 2022

drsnoopy said:
The Kelvin temperature and tint are determined by the cameras processor

not K/tint, but raw channel multipliers... "K & tint" is what is usually presented to a dumb user in the UI by raw converters, etc ( more - different software will calculate those K / tint values differently from the same set of raw channel multipliers and in some cases like ACR/LR it might calculate it differently based on camera profile used ) - but internally it is just set of multipliers (usually 3, but some camera models might have 4 if they need to account for variable difference in "green" channels).

drsnoopy · Apr 10, 2022

zzip said:
drsnoopy said:

The Kelvin temperature and tint are determined by the cameras processor

Click to expand...

not K/tint, but raw channel multipliers... "K & tint" is what is usually presented to a dumb user in the UI by raw converters, etc ( more - different software will calculate those K / tint values differently from the same set of raw channel multipliers and in some cases like ACR/LR it might calculate it differently based on camera profile used ) - but internally it is just set of multipliers (usually 3, but some camera models might have 4 if they need to account for variable difference in "green" channels).

Thanks, that’s a useful clarification for the thread. I did already understand how it works at sensor/processor level. I was trying to explain the point in basic terms to the OP who still seems to think that his R5’s AWB should in some way be more “accurate”or “normal” and less variable. Different manufacturers have different algorithms for AWB, and while they may behave differently, no single one is more “correct” than others.

expro · Apr 10, 2022

When the light shading/colours are ‘difficult’ then canon 5 series bodies awb has always struggled.

AWBW is a partially successful improvement to achieve more neutral results but results can look cold.

1 series bodies are better but still struggle with landscapes.

so I agree with you that Canon awb could be better to reduce our workarounds.

what's up with awb?

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