A6300: Recommended NIGHT White Balance for Stills/ 4K Video

[DJDream]

Hi guys,

I am trying to set a proper NIGHT white balance for shooting 4K Video at night.

For stills I am using the AWB and I am not sure if it is the best possible for night still shots, but it is less critical than choosing the right WB for video, since that on video it is recommended not to use the AWB.

So, how do you guys the WB for night shoots for both stills but especially for 4K videos, considering that I am shooting in a medium lighted environment/street at night ? I assume that you choose a custom WB, but to which value it is set ?

Thanks,

DJD

 

[Cheese Gromit]

For difficult lighting/white balance (and exposure sometimes) I use an Expodisc

 

[Sympa]

I set the white balance with something white - often a piece of paper. The manual white balance uses a spot meter, which means you can use a small object to correctly set white balance.

Note that paper may contain optical brighteners, but in night scenes these are not active so paper should work fine.

Also note that night scenes often look better with a warmer tint. In any case with the warm tint one gets less noise in the blue channel.

 

[Labe]

Hi guys,

I am trying to set a proper NIGHT white balance for shooting 4K Video at night.

For stills I am using the AWB and I am not sure if it is the best possible for night still shots, but it is less critical than choosing the right WB for video, since that on video it is recommended not to use the AWB.

So, how do you guys the WB for night shoots for both stills but especially for 4K videos, considering that I am shooting in a medium lighted environment/street at night ? I assume that you choose a custom WB, but to which value it is set ?

Thanks,

DJD

I use custom white balance with a grey card. You could simply take a few shots in raw and go home and try using a dropper on various parts of the scene and note the value and apply it manually using the kelvin input options

 

[uhligfd]

In the night, "...choosing the right WB .." for video would be tough.

I am assuming you will move the camera and shot angle etc on video. Not an Andy Warhole 'short'.

If you do move the camera you will undoubtedly encounter different color light, so one setting will be wrong for 99 % of your shots: pan from one streetlight to another, from an orange one to a green or silver blue one and you cannot keep up with your light setting. I have never done video, except for the Nex7 inadvertent ones of my shoe tops, but is there no grading option to adjust WB on the video itself?

Even in daylight snow or forest scenes, there is one proper color setting for the sunlit scenes and another for the shadows of boulders (unless you like blue skin tones ... ), all on one video clip. Have you tried just setting WB to AWB? Why would that not work? For stills it does (a little bit). And as always WB is in the mind of the viewer and most often it needs to be adjusted in post.

Unless - as I have heard - you shoot with a Fuji and believe in their OOC jpegs ... which I would not ... even for stills.

 

[Markr041]

Hi guys,

I am trying to set a proper NIGHT white balance for shooting 4K Video at night.

For stills I am using the AWB and I am not sure if it is the best possible for night still shots, but it is less critical than choosing the right WB for video, since that on video it is recommended not to use the AWB.

So, how do you guys the WB for night shoots for both stills but especially for 4K videos, considering that I am shooting in a medium lighted environment/street at night ? I assume that you choose a custom WB, but to which value it is set ?

Thanks,

DJD

I shot this NIGHT video using AWB. I do not think any other setting would do:

 

[DaFireMedic]

I find it much easier to correct WB in post with stills (RAW) than with video and often use auto, but prefer custom.

You do have some control over grading video in post, but I find it much more difficult to correct for a poor WB in post, so I try to get it as close as possible in camera. As previous posters said, if the light source is fairly static and doesn't change as you move around, I set a custom WB using a piece of white poster board. The Auto WB on the a6300 is better than it was on my previous Panasonic camera and does a fairly good job, but its not perfect. I much prefer to set a custom WB, as it is almost always more accurate for the lighting at the spot where you actually set the WB, but its not always practical, or even possible to set a custom WB when lighting is changing as you move, especially when shooting while moving.

The WB looks pretty good to me on Markr041's video.

 

[TheClueless]

For difficult lighting/white balance (and exposure sometimes) I use an Expodisc

...I hadn't come across this before, but doesn't this turn the camera into a light sensor - i.e. you have to demount the camera from the tripod, shlep across to your subject and use it as a meter in effect?

 

[Cheese Gromit]

For difficult lighting/white balance (and exposure sometimes) I use an Expodisc

...I hadn't come across this before, but doesn't this turn the camera into a light sensor - i.e. you have to demount the camera from the tripod, shlep across to your subject and use it as a meter in effect?

Yes, it measures incident light rather than reflective light for white balance, so unless you subject is near to something 18% gray or wearing something suitable to change the white balance in post you will still have to shlep across to where the subject is and use a gray card (or do this before hand) or maybe a colour target (Davinchi Resolve can work well, not tried it for night shoots though, other software may also do this as well) ;-)

 

[TheClueless]

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