GH3 best white balance for night head/tail/stop lights?

[Stephen Crye]

Hi All;

Please have a look at these frame grabs taken last night doing some slow shutter tests off the side of a local freeway.

BTW, I had counted on the camera embedding the details in the .MOV files, so I did not take any notes while shooting, so the settings are mostly from memory - does anyone know how to interpret a blue "gear" WB icon followed by an orange underscore? The "gear" icon only turns blue when the color shift adjustment is used. I had at least hoped that the GH3 would keep track of shutter, aperture and ISO the way my Sony's did. Oh well, I guess I just need to carry a little notebook with me - used to do that in high school photography class.

So ... WB is pretty routine in daylight, or indoors, or in most situations - use a preset, or grab a white/warm/cool card. But night lights are a different story, be they traffic, tail lights, signal lights, police/fire/ambulance or xmas. It seems like nothing works. If I adjust for the stop lights, the amber/green is off. If I get the concrete correct under sodium lights, the green freeway lights are too blue.

I'm wondering if this is just my wishing the 4:2:0 GH3 was a 4:2:2 cam ...

The GH3 has a neat little color grid in the Manual K option. I've been playing with it but I don't know what I am doing ... the GH3 advanced manual is not much help.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Steve