Nightime white balance

[Brent Smith]

Shot my first evening sportscar race last evening and had a question. What do others use for a white balance setting once it gets dark? I would assume a custom setting would be the best way to go but is it possible to get away with an auto setting?

Thanks.

[John Thawley]

I leave it to the auto setting. I've found that most tracks with any kind of lighting is pretty inconsistent in type, age, and temperature....

JT

[Todd Corzett]

Auto WB and if I can shoot RAW I will (makes WB corrections a bit easier). Something you may not want to use auto for is exposure... when you are shooting cars that have their headlights on your camera can get thrown-off by them resulting in overly dark photos. Manual is a photographer's friend, just make sure to check the histograms and adjust things as the light changes.

-Todd...

[Dennis Murray]

Agree with Todd...I haven't been shooting night racing lately but have been shooting night high school football with marginal lighting. The type of lighting generally used cycles in temperature so a custom wb will only be right sometimes. (Not to mention the temperature of the headlights varying from that of the fixed lighting.)

Manual exposure is always the way to go, in my book.

[Todd Corzett]

Auto WB
Well, I took a little Aperture seminar the other day and the topic of WB came up briefly. One thing that was mentioned was that using the 'Lift and Stamp' tool to do white balance required the photos to have very similar (but wrong) WB. Auto WB would create slightly different WB for each image, so using 'Lift and Stamp' may not produce the most accurate results. It was suggested to use a consistent custom WB (even if wrong) and then correct the images using a 'Lift and Stamp'. Now I don't know if this would be the best method... it does kinda make sense... but just wanted to throw it out there. I know for studio work from now on I will use a manual WB just so that I can use the 'Lift and Stamp' more efficiently when it comes to WB... as for motorsports I think I'll still use auto WB.

-Todd...

[Aaron Kupferman]

I generally shoot Daylight during the day and Shade or Cloudy during the night. I prefer to have a consistent white balance across my images so I can see subtle and strong color changes that might be happening because of the subject or other lights. This gives me a better idea of what is happening in my images. I will then modify the WB when doing my RAW post-processing to something that might work better for me. No one method is right, but this seems to work for me pretty well.