A7C AWB lock

[Neil12345]

Hi, I have an A7C and havent been happy with AWB, often it just looks wrong, too dull/grey. Ive been using the other WB settings which are not always easy to choose vs a vs the ambient light, while AWB should be the best choice for quick and easy shots.

However, I just discovered the 'AWB Lock' feature. I use it at the moment with the shutter button half way down, this allows me to hold a focus point then recompose, and I get the right WB for the subject, it works great ! Alternatively AWB Lock can be assigned to a button, which could be useful for setting a specific WB for a shoot in a fixed place. I've been messing around using Vivid to compensate for dull photos with Standard, which of course over saturates half the photos; now I can use Standard no problem and the photos look as they should. Or I can use Vivid for plants for example, and get deep colours without having to keep changing the WB colour settings.

I thought this might be of interest, and would welcome any other recommendations.

 

[Neil12345]

An update on this, for anyone interested.

I've now been using the A7C for a year, and use AWB Lock assigned to the video button (I hardly use video on the A7C, I didn't buy it for that as I knew that video is not its strongest point). When using the camera in 14bit mode (long exposure NR must be off), then I find the photos look great, with the right WB most of the time compared to what I saw, super colours and dynamic range, using the Standard Creative Style with no adjustments.

I no longer associate AWB Lock to the shutter button, but use the video button as that allows me to 'grab' the WB for a few photos, and leave the shutter button for focus tracking. I use the Auto Focus button as AE Lock Hold, which allows me to lock with my thumb the right exposure from the sky for example, before final composure.

I was lucky, as I didn't know the A7C has AWB Lock, and thought about the A7iii, but that doesn't have AWB Lock.

Note that I see a big difference between colour depth and dynamic range between 14bit and 12bit mode; the only downside of 14bit is very slightly more noise at high ISOs, but it's negligible, and Imaging Edge Desktop has a really strong noise reduction option (I found it better than DxO, which I'm trying out). JPEGs created from a 14bit Raw photo look practically as good as the Raw image, when using IED anyway, I suppose the software averages out the Raw colours across the 256 JPEG colours. I did some tests and found that the in-camera JPEG quality is not as good as when created from the 14bit Raw file on a pc; in 12bit mode the JPEG quality looks the same between in-camera and pc.