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Old November 12th 04, 04:05 PM
Renee
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Default Canon S1 IS (and others) White Balance: Auto / Presets / Cusom

This is sort of a continuation of a previous thread, only I'm not about to
get baited this time. The subject of white balance is a worthy discussion
and I thought it deserved a post of its own.

I eventually will come to a question but until then, here's some (rambling)
notes of interest you're welcome to comment upon even if you're not an S1
owner:

In all fairness to the uninformed, newbie digital camera shopper, this much
should be said. Any reasonable, somewhat experienced digicam user will agree
that the topic of having to adjust white balance is not camera-brand
specific. Practically all digital cameras have an adjustment for it, for
good reason.

Out of curiosity I did an internet search and found tons of web articles and
Google posts written about it.

One article on the subject has a pretty good display of white balance photo
examples. Most importantly, it doesn't refer to a particular camera brand as
having more or less of this problem. So no matter what your brand, it's best
to learn how to best deal with it. And practically all digital cameras have
ways to help you do so.

Although the article doesn't go into the subject of adjusting Kelvin
temperature or anything more technical, it's still worth a look.

Here's the link if you're interested

http://tinyurl.com/42tad

When I first got my current camera, I read in a generic digital photography
book that it's advisable to avoid using AWB indoors. I don't have the source
of reference or exact quote because I no longer have the library book I
checked out. It didn't mention a camera brand, it just said to avoid it
indoors. It also said that AWB works best outside in sunny conditions. The
author was a professional photographer with a much more sophisticated camera
than I own, so I took his advice to heart.

Since then, the only times I have purposely used AWB indoors, in few short
months I've owned this camera, was when I had absolutely no idea how to set
the white balance preset. It was on some of my theater photos where the
stage light colors and intensity kept changing and were unpredictable. I
have also used AWB outdoors on my sunrise photos because I was not sure what
preset would work best. In both cases, I was really happy with the results.
I know that's not saying much since I'm not a professional photographer.

As a casual shooter, I hardly ever do post-processing and have been quite
happy with indoor skin tones using the tungsten preset of my camera. The one
time did post-processing was to get rid of someone's shiny forehead, not
anything to do with color.

That's all besides the point, since here's what I've been wondering:

After perusing the internet, it's my understanding now that you only do a
custom white balance adjustment indoors when you're shooting without a
flash. Maybe that's what you all meant, and I somehow missed the point. Is
this correct? I've only played around with the presets and haven't tried to
do a custom white balance with my camera yet. I wonder whether the custom
adjustment will work, as someone mentioned, on a white spot instead of using
a white paper or gray card. A spot would be much more convenient for casual
shooting. Will it work if the white spot doesn't completely fill the center
of the frame? I guess you could try zooming in on it first so it does. I'll
have to give that try when I get a chance. Meanwhile, does anyone else use
custom white balance with the Canon S1 IS, when and how do you use it, and
what kind of results do you get?

TIA

Renee