Because a lot of my projects are run and gun I (mostly) have no choice but to rely on the FS5's auto White Balance (WB). Sadly it seems a lot more off across scenarios than my Canon (XF300) ever was in auto WB. The FS5 suffers from a tendency towards green in my rushes, particularly outdoors. But it's not consistently off enough to alter the WB settings in the profiles.

I'm curious to know whether others are finding the same thing and whether you regularly use a white/grey card to manually WB your FS5's?

I have another camera but the principle is the same, for run and gun I use a expodisc to whitebalance which is very quick to do and easy to carry around.

When I can, I'm using a collapsible Lastolite white/grey card. But I must admit the expodisc lots very interesting Noa. In practical terms is it always as good as a card?

I see they now have a newer version and one with extra gels but when I got mine there where two versions I believe, one standard and one that gave some warmer colors. I have the standard version, when I enter a room where I have to shoot I either point the camera to the most dominant light source or I stand on the place my camera will be pointed at and then point my camera to where I"m going to stand and make the white balance by just placing the expodisc on the lens and press my whitebalance button on the camera, if necessary I make a second whitebalance and assign it to either the a or b whitebalance switch.
The expodisc is just hanging with a strap around my neck ready to be used in an instant.

My expodisc gives me a balanced color that is perfect for further grading, it's not the exact color as you can see it with your eyes but it makes white appear white even if there are other factors, like colored stained glass, that influence the overall color. This is exactly what I want as I then can easily push it more towards red or blue depending if I want it to have a colder or warmer look or if I need to match it with other brand camera's which also becomes easy.

I only do manual white balance usually on anything that may be reflective white. Takes 5 seconds. Outside, I rarely white balance, but use preset. Works just fine. Auto white balance ...never use it...ever!

Because a lot of my projects are run and gun I (mostly) have no choice but to rely on the FS5's auto White Balance (WB). Sadly it seems a lot more off across scenarios than my Canon (XF300) ever was in auto WB. The FS5 suffers from a tendency towards green in my rushes, particularly outdoors. But it's not consistently off enough to alter the WB settings in the profiles.

I'm curious to know whether others are finding the same thing and whether you regularly use a white/grey card to manually WB your FS5's?

Because a lot of my projects are run and gun I (mostly) have no choice but to rely on the FS5's auto White Balance (WB)

Nigel, I always hear "I don't have a choice" when you refer to your reliance on the cameras auto features.

But you *do* have a choice. You have a choice how to learn to use your equipment properly. Please stop giving the impression that as paid professional camera people we have to rely on auto features rather than use our skill and judgement to operate expensive pieces of kit that have a superb range of controls that are easily used by a moderately skilled operator.

Having had footage presented to me by a third party where the operator used auto white balance and auto exposure, it was painful to grade and was an awful lot of effort and I couldn't get perfect results from the footage.

While balance was the first thing drilled into me by one of my tutors back when I was learning. There's always something around you can white balance off and it was the press of a button even back then on the Panasonic VHS cameras we were learning on.

I only do manual white balance usually on anything that may be reflective white. Takes 5 seconds. Outside, I rarely white balance, but use preset. Works just fine. Auto white balance ...never use it...ever!

Exactly. There is always something to white balance off. Pretty much the words of my tutor 18 years ago. He wouldn't tolerate 'auto' features from a bunch of video production students just a few weeks into a 3 year course, so goodness me we shouldn't tolerate it as qualified professionals.

When you have to move fast looking for "something white" indoors is a luxury you often don't have which is why I like using my expodisc so much, I only need to look at the light source that I need a whitebalance from, place the disc on the lens, point the camera to that lightsource and press a button. Since the disc is within hands reach all the time this is the fastest way by far to get balanced colors.

Guys please dial down the condescending padawan thing, please. Your projects are probably very different to mine and I know that you know, one shoe does not fit all.

Here's a typical scenario I shot just the other night. It was a church youth event. Three rooms, different activities, some time sensitive (art and cooking, so a temporal progression to them). It was 7pm at night (light was slowly changing outside) and all three rooms had windows and overhead lighting (tungsten in two rooms flores in the third). Some of the kids didn't have parental permission to be filmed, but I couldn't herd them into a corner, thus some angles were limited. One of the activities had kids running around a sports hall (overhead flores and windows only along one side). For health and safety reasons I could not turn off lights in any of the rooms. I had one hour to get all the activities and to do that I needed to rotate between rooms every 5 mins or so.

Now if you can shoot that sceanrio taking time to WB in all the different constantly changing scenarios, you are indeed a videographer I should be heeding.

There are definitely some scenerios where you do not have a choice.

I also can say that I have never used auto in all my 35 years of shooting. Not once. And I've been in some situations that make your scenario look like a walk in the park. In fact, in the situation you describe there is even more reason than ever to WB correctly and often.

Listen to Marcus, he speaks wisdom above.

BTW, shameless plug, I usually white balance on WarmCards.
http://www.warmcards.com/WC1.html

I find white-balance cards difficult to deal with when working alone, you either need to hold them in front of your camera by yourself or ask someone to hold it for you or place them on something. That's fine in controlled environments but doesn't work out so well if your time is very limited and if you have to run and gun.
Now if you can shoot that scenario taking time to WB in all the different constantly changing scenarios
The way I described how I take my whitebalance should not be that difficult to deal with the scenario you described, it just takes a few seconds every-time you change location and saves you from a headache getting your colors right in post.

There are definitely some scenerios where you do not have a choice.

You haven't described circumstances where there is no choice. There was a choice, you chose not to.

By making that choice you then end up with a recording where the white balance may shift around within single shot making grading more difficult as you'll then need to start setting keyframes.

In the footage I had to grade, each room was lit with fluorescents, had daylight through the windows and a projector running in the middle of the room. Every time the camera panned past the projector (which seemed to be running at a fairly high colour temp) the camera (think it was an EX3) shifted the colour balance and then back again. It looked ridiculous and was time consuming to correct. All the operator had to do was pick a single sensible white balance for the room but instead played the auto white balance lottery creating alot of work.

Marcus you are trying to deflect to a different scenario, that although challenging, did have a manual WB option. You have not told me how you would achieve manual WB'ing in my scenario and acquire enough of the shots to maintain continuity.

I also can say that I have never used auto in all my 35 years of shooting. Not once. And I've been in some situations that make your scenario look like a walk in the park. In fact, in the situation you describe there is even more reason than ever to WB correctly and often.

Listen to Marcus, he speaks wisdom above.

BTW, shameless plug, I usually white balance on WarmCards.
WarmCards - White Balance Reference System (http://www.warmcards.com/WC1.html)

So how would you have manually WB'ed in my scenario then?

Marcus you are trying to deflect to a different scenario, that although challenging, did have a manual WB option. You have not told me how you would achieve manual WB'ing in my scenario and acquire enough of the shots to maintain continuity.

I wasn't trying to deflect at all. I was trying to point out the problems of auto, which will happen in your situation as well.

The camera has two white balance presets. You pick a sensible mid points for your rooms. You don't need to micro manage every shots white balance. If you have a good balance then correcting small imperfections in post is a doddle.

Not everything needs to be balanced to a perfect white when there are multiple light sources and you are on the move. Doesn't happen in real life. If you really are working that fast in a dynamic situation (and we all have to do it) then you get it as right as you can. Whatever you do yourself, it will be better than the cameras auto features going for a walk and at least the colour temp will be fixed so you can easily sort it out later rather than having to keyframe shots.

But if you learn how to use the cameras features it just becomes subconscious. You only realise this when you swap from another model of camera only to find your left hand fumbling for a control that is now in a different place.

Just practice and experiment. It will soon become second nature.

So how would you have manually WB'ed in my scenario then?

The thing is that with auto white balance, you are not white balancing at all. The camera keeps adjusting as you move from shot to shot making your life in post very difficult. Same with auto exposure. I wish I had the option of reassigning the auto buttons. Every once in a while I will hit an auto button by mistake and for a moment or two the camera will take control and do weird stuff. Freaks me out. The hold button is useful, but too limiting.

Marcus had some some good suggestions as to how to handle your scenario. Use the a and b white balance memory buttons to store your own presets for a couple of the rooms. Use them and then relax as you run around and get your shots.

I guess we've reached the obvious impasse when discussing my RnG scenario. Since I can't put anyone into it letting us both use our championed WB methods and then measuring grading time vs shots acquired, there will be no way to prove who is right. So although the discussion may continue, practically it's a moot point.

But before you conclude I'm obviously inexperienced for using auto anything, do see my comments further up. I do manually WB in some/many scenarios. It's not as if the importance of manual anything is lost on me. But what I strongly disagree with is the mantra proliferated regularly on these boards that any and all 'auto' is bad.

Like some of you I've dabbled in a mixture of genres over the years; corporate, documentary, live TV, drama, weddings, etc. My observation is any filming scenario will sit somewhere on the scale of 'totally controllable' to 'totally uncontrollable'. Up at the extreme end of uncontrollable 'auto' can be the only way you will get the shot. When you see the output of an ENG cameraman shooting in a war zone he will be using many auto features, perhaps with the exception (but not always) of focus. There are a raft of RnG scenarios where you will not have the time nor the reflexes to get the shot if you do everything or even some things in manual.

So to keep saying auto is always bad is just nonsense. It's like saying self driving cars should never be allowed on the road even though it's inevitable they'll become safer than humans. in certain scenarios that CPU is better than us.

Auto anything is just a tool. Sometimes it's the best tool, often it's not. But it has definitely earned a place in my tool bag.

The thing is that with auto white balance, you are not white balancing at all. The camera keeps adjusting as you move from shot to shot making your life in post very difficult. Same with auto exposure. I wish I had the option of reassigning the auto buttons. Every once in a while I will hit an auto button by mistake and for a moment or two the camera will take control and do weird stuff. Freaks me out. T

Hah. Yes, turning the camera on and the 'full auto' switch has got knocked in the camera bag. Like being in a car where the steering wheel has stopped responding.

I've never used auto white balance. The results are too unpredictable. But I don't often manual white balance using a card either (except for in controlled situations).

Most of my work is run and gun. For outdoor shoots, white balance is easy. You can use the presets, or use 5500-6000k for daylight, 6500-7000k for overcast sky, etc.

Indoors is a bit trickier but I find that making an educated guess based on the type of light source 99% of the time gets good results.

There really is no reason to use auto.

However, for those saying that auto exposure should never be used - I disagree. For fast paced run and gun shoots (I do a lot of sports events), using auto iris (or auto ND with the FS5) is perfectly acceptable.

for those saying that auto exposure should never be used - I disagree. For fast paced run and gun shoots (I do a lot of sports events), using auto iris (or auto ND with the FS5) is perfectly acceptable.
I think weddings can be considered as fast r&g events as well but I never would use auto iris as that is according to me, together with getting the right whitebalance and focus a keyfactor in getting a good image. I also would say there is no reason why you ever should use autoexposure as your camera will get it wrong whenever it is dealing with a backlight and it also doesn't know what part of the image you want the exposure to be set to and it can constantly fluctuate with every minor change in position of subjects even in a static frame, I can think of many scenarios where a auto exposure would make my shot unusable.

However, for those saying that auto exposure should never be used - I disagree. For fast paced run and gun shoots (I do a lot of sports events), using auto iris (or auto ND with the FS5) is perfectly acceptable.

Maybe for you and your clients it is perfectly acceptable, but it is not acceptable under any circumstances to me or my clients. In fact, back when I had people working for me you'd have been fired for doing it. People are welcome to justify their actions anyway they want, but somehow a lot of us have been able to get through our entire careers (35 years for me) without ever using auto once. And if we can do it, anyone can do it.

There is actually one exception which I didn't mention as I was talking from a standpoint where I am operating a camera, in that case I always do my exposure manually, even in rapidly changing light conditions as I just don't trust the camera to get it right as the conditions can be so unreliable depending on where I point the camera at.

One exception though is when I shoot a ceremony with 3 to 4 camera's, on my unmanned camera's I manually set exposure if I know the light conditions won't change but when it's a partially cloudy day and the sun appears/disappears behind the clouds every few minutes then light conditions can dramatically change from one moment to another, it's much easier to change the color in post if you have set your whitebalance to a preset outdoor in such a situation as the color temperature will change, then it is to change a underexposed and even worse overexposed image. Only if there is no backlight to shoot against I will set my unmanned camera's to autoexposure only because I have no other choice, the reason I don't have a choice is that no-one is behind the camera to make the necessary changes. You might say then hire a guy to check up on those camera's but if the client is not willing to pay for that then this is a calculated risk I have to take and the client is made aware of that. Because these unmanned camera's don't change position the risk of getting it wrong is much smaller compared to panning a camera or walking around with one as then autoexposure can become very unreliable.

Obviously unmanned cameras, GoPros, etc. are totally different thing. I don't even understand the point of bring it up in this discussion.

The point being that there are exceptions to the rule where you don't have a choice as it was said there always is a choice. I also wasn't talking about gopro's but fully featured videocamera's that are used unmanned.

There are NO exceptions to the rule for MANNED cameras and your bringing unmanned cameras into the discussion has nothing to do with it. That was my point.

I give up. Do what you want and justify it however you want because I don't care enough about it to keep going around in circles. If you feel you need to use auto then maybe YOU do. I haven't seen your work or know how skilled you, are so maybe auto is the best choice for you. But don't try to paint fellow professionals with the same brush or act like it is common practice because many of us do not need auto under any circumstances with a MANNED camera.

Well, I still find it a valid point, whether you agree with it or not, I know we where talking about manned camera's and there I shared my opinion on using auto modes but since we where also talking about using the camera at events more then one camera could come into play. Often budgets don't allow having a operator at every camera and in such a case you may need to take a calculated risk and use the auto functionality because you don't have another choice and that doesn't mean you are not a "professional". If that would be the case why are some "professionals" so keen on using the autofocus on the c300II, maybe because it's so good? But I know, that was not the talking point here either so I"ll shut up as I made my point.

Maybe for you and your clients it is perfectly acceptable, but it is not acceptable under any circumstances to me or my clients. In fact, back when I had people working for me you'd have been fired for doing it. People are welcome to justify their actions anyway they want, but somehow a lot of us have been able to get through our entire careers (35 years for me) without ever using auto once. And if we can do it, anyone can do it.

There are situations in the type of work that I do where auto exposure is the only way to get it done. For example, going from room to room in a house while doing a "walkthrough" property tour using a stabilizer. Exposure can't be adjusted on the fly while my FS5 is mounted on my Ronin - it has to be done automatically.

That would actually be almost the same as running a unmanned camera, eventhough you can see what the camera is doing, the Ronin prevents you from controlling the camera while you are shooting. Doug probably would not understand the point to bring it up in this discussion either as it is not a MANNED camera in the sense that you are handholding a camera and physically controlling it but also here I find this one a valid point in showing that there can be circumstances when you have no other choice then to rely on auto functionality.

+1
Thanks for saving me the time of posting.

Excellent, I'm glad we all agree :)

When outdoors (generally cloudy in the UK!) I just go for the daylight preset. But indoors I find a different kettle of fish. If I'm balancing with a white card/object/whatever I'm essentially cancelling out a lot of the warmth from the existing lighting. I don't like that, I like to capture what it looks like in the moment. So I actually do a lot of indoor stuff by eye alone and dial in a custom setting so that what I see on my screen matches what I see in the room, I've not had any issues so far. Of course I operate in run and gun situations 90% of the time, give me an interview setup and lighting and it's proper WB'ing every time.

When outdoors (generally cloudy in the UK!) I just go for the daylight preset. But indoors I find a different kettle of fish. If I'm balancing with a white card/object/whatever I'm essentially cancelling out a lot of the warmth from the existing lighting. I don't like that, I like to capture what it looks like in the moment. So I actually do a lot of indoor stuff by eye alone and dial in a custom setting so that what I see on my screen matches what I see in the room, I've not had any issues so far. Of course I operate in run and gun situations 90% of the time, give me an interview setup and lighting and it's proper WB'ing every time.

Yep I do the same thing (with run and gun work) and 99% of the time it's spot on and I don't need to tweak colours in post (I like to shoot with a WYSIWYG profile).

I don't think Auto WB is ever a good idea, but I also don't subscribe to the idea that every single shot needs to be WB manually with a white card. I also don't think there is any point disparaging other peoples methods if it is working for them.

Learn about the different types of lighting and how they are mixing together in your scenes, then you can make informed choices on the spot. For example, if you're running between sunlight outside and Fluro's inside, you can probably flick back and forth between ~6500K and ~4200K and be pretty much in the ballpark each time. In this situation you can even set these up as your presets.

These days the tools are good enough that you can adjust a lot in post, too. If you were shooting 30 years ago there was not an easy way to do a global white balance adjustment. These days - especially with 10 bit files and the Lumetri sliders in Premiere - it is incredibly easy to fix minor white balance issues in post. You probably can't correct blue skin if you've totally forgotten to do a WB at all - but you can fix things like the gradual warming up of a setting sun throughout the afternoon, which might equate to a 300K-500K change. Use your knowledge, Kelvin dial and presets to lock your white balance into the right ballpark, and you'll be much better off than with AWB, without having to constantly reach into your bag for a white card or find something white in the scene.

There are 3 WB options with the switch. Just take a moment and make them appropriate for your environment as you set up (come early if you think you have no time) and switch between them on the fly if you actually move from one lighting to another. Auto WB will always be changing, so it's always ruining your footage. You can trust the pros telling you it's never a good choice to use auto WB. They are trying to save you trouble down the road. If you ever get a truly pro gig where you turn in the footage for someone else to edit, just see what happens when you give them auto WB footage. You will undoubtedly get some negative feedback, and probably won't get called again. I can only suggest you just try to deal with not using WB. It's a psychological crutch that isn't really helping. It's easier to fix an improper WB in post than an auto WB, as auto is constantly shifting.

I know I will get flamed for this, but I'm using ATW quite often with my FS7 (works nice, and the WB changes are very gradual and subtle). I can afford this as I'm personally editing all my stuff - and doing so, in 99% of the auto-WB changes I find them acceptable and not even calling for any balancing in post...

Of course I only do this when e.g. following my subject in run&gun style, while he/she enters indoors from sunshine or vice-versa. I'd say that gradual change of white balance as executed by ATW can look more natural than abrupt changes I'd get if I had stopped recording, WB-ed to some gray card (one-push AWB is not always possible in low-light indoor circumstances), and continued shooting with completely different white balance setting (not to mention I'd have to stop my subject and ask him/her to wait till I'm done with it).

Now flame me :)

Piotr

When I discovered ATW on a Beta 300, I thought I'd found Utopia. It's like white balancing, only automatically! As tutored by my older mentors, I never used it - always white balanced at every scene change. Shooting news, I was just using the (B&W) viewfinder.
Fast forward to shooting in a hospital and needing to follow a gurney from an ambulance into the ER ... white balance hell - I decided to flip to ATW and hope for the best. Did a quick walk through of the shot and then back outside to get the gurney coming out of the ambulance. Roll the shot, follow the crew out of the (warm) ambulance, into the (cool) sunshine, into the (problematic, sometimes warm, sometimes cool) fluorescents in the hospital. Get back to the station and play back the shot... the inside stuff is blue, the outside stuff is orange, the hospital stuff is blue again. Turns out it takes the ATW 15 seconds to settle on a WB, and in my three-scenario change, there was just enough time to screw every segment of my shot. This being the 90's, I turned the chroma down on the proc amp, ran it black and white, and declared it artsy.

Anyhow. This is why old codgers don't like ATW. Because 20 years ago it sucked.

The ATW on my FS5 could take care of that ambulance - daylight - hospital shot no problem. (Luckily we have HIPPA now, protecting citizens from... well, I dunno, but providing more opportunity for paperwork in government - so that shot would never be possible now anyway.)

So there's that story. And then there's this.
If you ever get a truly pro gig where you turn in the footage for someone else to edit, just see what happens when you give them auto WB footage. You will undoubtedly get some negative feedback, and probably won't get called again.
A "truly pro gig" is a video gig for which you are paid, when doing video is your profession. You are using the term to mean something different, presumably working on a major Hollywood production with a team of colorists and editors backing you up. While that's a fine goal, it's not everyone's goal (it's certainly not mine), and even if it is your goal, the fact of the matter is that while achieving that, you will shoot a metric ton of stuff that does not have a decent colorist (much less editor) backing you up.
Having shot a metric ton of stuff over the last ~20 years, I have edited some myself, and handed much off to editors of a variety of skill levels. I assure you that my phone continues to ring. Today, the editors that I know would rather have a decent baseline to color correct from. If I shot that indoor -> outdoor -> indoor shot on a fixed WB, the editors I work with would kill me.

Don't be so closed-minded about "professional" work. It could mean Hollywood and that could mean never using ATW. But there are a lot of "professionals" out there doing something different than what you do.

I was just using the (B&W) viewfinder.

Ah, sweet memories, 10 years ago I was doing a videocourse where we had to shoot with a Sony dsr250p which also only had a b&w viewfinder, I"m not sure but I think it couldn't even do autoWB and we would get hit in the head whenever we forgot to whitebalance and come back from a shoot where everyone looked like a smurf indoors :)

A "truly pro gig" is a video gig for which you are paid, when doing video is your profession. You are using the term to mean something different, presumably working on a major Hollywood production with a team of colorists and editors backing you up. While that's a fine goal, it's not everyone's goal (it's certainly not mine), and even if it is your goal, the fact of the matter is that while achieving that, you will shoot a metric ton of stuff that does not have a decent colorist (much less editor) backing you up.
Having shot a metric ton of stuff over the last ~20 years, I have edited some myself, and handed much off to editors of a variety of skill levels. I assure you that my phone continues to ring. Today, the editors that I know would rather have a decent baseline to color correct from. If I shot that indoor -> outdoor -> indoor shot on a fixed WB, the editors I work with would kill me.

Don't be so closed-minded about "professional" work. It could mean Hollywood and that could mean never using ATW. But there are a lot of "professionals" out there doing something different than what you do.

By "truly pro" I mean a gig where the client knows enough to tell when the WB is not right. There are plenty of paid gigs where the client knows nothing about video, and it's our job to know what looks best.

I know I will get flamed for this, but I'm using ATW quite often with my FS7 (works nice, and the WB changes are very gradual and subtle). I can afford this as I'm personally editing all my stuff - and doing so, in 99% of the auto-WB changes I find them acceptable and not even calling for any balancing in post...

Of course I only do this when e.g. following my subject in run&gun style, while he/she enters indoors from sunshine or vice-versa. I'd say that gradual change of white balance as executed by ATW can look more natural than abrupt changes I'd get if I had stopped recording, WB-ed to some gray card (one-push AWB is not always possible in low-light indoor circumstances), and continued shooting with completely different white balance setting (not to mention I'd have to stop my subject and ask him/her to wait till I'm done with it).

Now flame me :)

Piotr

I won't flame you, but I will point out that those slow, gradual changes are exactly where the problems can arise. One single, abrupt manual WB change can be covered by a cut away, and only happens once. A slow, gradual change effects the whole scene, and especially becomes problematic when you start cutting between 2 cameras which will drift in and out of balance. An example is in an interview situation where the subject might move their head a little to the side and throw off the balance of the scene causing the AWB on one camera to readjust. Sure, the camera might do this nice and smoothly, so much so that you might not notice until you cut to the other camera and realise it is now totally different. And once the interview is cut up, with grabs shifted all over the place, you'll end up up with colours going all over the place.

The indoor-to-out-door follow-cam shot is about the only scenario I can think of where auto WB should ever be used. Even then, I prefer to break it up as a sequence where possible (ie cut from to reverse shot from inside) or, if that's absolutely not an option, put in a cut-away.