Thoughts on white balance and minimizing noise levels.

[Steven Thomas]

In the past there's been some discussion on using warm cards (blue cards) to create an inbox look. There's obvious pros and cons. Some feel the image should be taken as color balanced as possible and all color looks should be done in post.

With white balancing under tungsten lighting (2800K-3200K), the blue channel tends to be the noisest. I can see why it may be an advantage to use warm cards. The real question is - if you decide in post to bring back up the blue channel for a balanced white, will that negate the blue channel noise improvement?

I guess some experiments would need to be performed.

[Daniel Browning]

Originally Posted by Steven Thomas

if you decide in post to bring back up the blue channel for a balanced white, will that negate the blue channel noise improvement?

Yes. In fact, it would be slightly worse than bringing up the blue channel in production. This is due to the same reasons that it's better to use gain in an 8-bit video camera than do gain in post: quantization, nonlinear signal processing, and compression.

[Steven Thomas]

Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

This is due to the same reasons that it's better to use gain in an 8-bit video camera than do gain in post: quantization, nonlinear signal processing, and compression.

Thanks Dan, good point.