EX1 and the (Auto) White Balance

[Sean Seah]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

Dear Dustin, seems you never work in run&gun style. If you did, you would know that following your subject, sometimes you cannot even stop recording, not to mention white-balancing manually each time your subject' lighting changes :)

Yup.. Run n Gun is the word. Try shooting in and out of a ballroom where it is daylight outside and tungsten lights inside. U have no time to use the card. I guess it is true that I would have to WB manually in the ambient b4 the shoot.

[Paul Chiu]

with the EX1 on full auto or "A", press the white balance button below the fujinon lens in the front, you'll be amazed how accurate the white balance is under mixed light when you point to objects predominately white or black.

try it out with wedding dresses, tablecloths, or tuxedos.

paul

[Serena Steuart]

Best practice is for the operator to be in control, including knowing which circumstances the camera can handle adequately with inbuilt functions (e.g. focus, iris, WB). White Balance should be set manually (for the reasons Bob stated above) but when time or circumstances don't allow you have the choice of 3 presets. The camera preset of 3200K gets you in the ball park for most indoor lighting and you might set 4000K and 5600K on A and B; you can judge by eye (identify the light sources) which to use. As Paul said, you can do a quick WB on any white surface it will change one of your presets). ATW is useful, but we should never be surprised when the camera gets it wrong. The aim should be to get WB close enough to easily correct in post, which also means keeping it constant through a scene. Often the atmosphere of the scene requires a deviation from true WB: candle-lit scenes, for example, should be rather warm. Biasing WB (which you can do in camera or with coloured cards) is about getting the "look" in camera so "post" can see the intention of the DOP, but less important if the shooter is the editor. There is also the idea of doing image processing in camera before it gets written out into long GOP at 8 bits.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Serena,

I agree with all your points, and am doing manual adjustments 90% of the times. I also have PPs for outside (with cine gammas ad 5400 K preset), and indoors (with STD gammas and 3200 K preset); finally - regardless on the PP currently in use - I try to program some other, typical for the anticipated lighting, values to the A and B memory positions in case I need them without changing the PP.

However, there must be a reason why the ATW is so sluggish and inconsistent on the EX1; with the V1E I could (if I wanted to) set it always ON, and the camera was right nearly 100% of the time...

[Paul Kellett]

We all know how to do a white balance, select A or B, fill the screen with something white then hit the WB button.

I presume the ATW works by measuring the whole picture/ scene not just white, if doing run and gun, you obviously don't have time to fill the screen with something white.

Yesterday i was in a situation were ATW was needed, i made it change quickly and accurately by hitting the WB button whilst in ATW mode.

Some sort of workaround maybe.

Paul.

[John Woo]

Originally Posted by Serena Steuart

The camera preset of 3200K gets you in the ball park for most indoor lighting and you might set 4000K and 5600K on A and B; .

That's what I did also. Work for me very well.

[Mark P. Stuart]

Digging up an old thread, has there ever been any firmware fix to EX1 sluggish or non responsive AWB?

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Yes - the 1.25 firmware provides a much more responsive ATW (not perfect, though).

[Mark P. Stuart]

Damn, just checked my FW version and already on 1.26. Sadly AWB is still slow and occasionally unresponsive... For cine transfer work its largely unusuable. Bizarre why EX1 so bad and other Sony cameras generally have good AWB...