"Rita Berkowitz" wrote:
Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

Strange we both wanted to find it though. I can't believe it would be
anything but trivual to implement when a new firmware release is
made. I might ask Nikon if they have any plans for it.

If you put the camera into Auto mode for White Balance, the data
to calculate Color Temperature will be retained in the Exif data.
(If you use any of the preset WB selections, the data for that
selection will be retained, and what the camera calculates will
not be saved.)

Thanks Floyd, but that wasn't what we (I) were looking for.

But it explains what you didn't understand. If you want
to go through the tedious process of finding out exactly
what the color temperature is, you can. It's a waste of
time though, because the information is not particularly
useful.

The goal was to
find out if it is possible to have the WB displayed in Kelvin and BIAS on
camera instead of looking at this info in post.

There is no display of the color temperature of White
Balance as measured by the camera. (I had thought you
understood that.)

For Auto-WB, I have my D3
set to "B1" in the BIAS.

Nothing is labeled as "BIAS". I assume you mean that you
adjusted the Amber/Blue balance offset to B1 for AUTO.

Do you have it set to B1 for a reason, or is that just
where it happens to be, by hook or by crook?

Do you have any idea what that does?
Do you typically shoot with WB set to "AUTO"?
And do you typically shoot JPEG or RAW?

It would be nice to know in real time the Kelvin
value and of what the camera interprets the WB to be.

Why? It's virtually meaningless information when
adjusting the camera.

It has some small value (as a reference index, not as an
actual measure of color temperature) when converting RAW
data to an image format.

It seems Nikon
doesn't feel the need to supply us this information. And really, when
shooting Auto-WB there's not much one can adjust on the fly, other than BIAS

There is no "BIAS" adjustment. I assume you mean the
fine tuning adjustements for Amber-Blue and
Green-Magenta.

The Amber-Blue adjustment increments approximately 5
mireds per unit. The Green-Magenta adjustment is
similar to Color Compensating filters. (Read pages 148
and 149 of the D3 manual.)

Which is to say that the "temperature" change will be
different depending on the actual temperature, and a
single increment is intended instead to have about an
equal effect on our perception of how much the color
changes.

to tweak to personal taste. In other words, there's nothing one can do with
this information while hitting the shutter release.

Bingo! It's worthless information.

Just as a hint... if you set WB to a specific color
temperature, be aware that the values given by Nikon
do not necessarily match the White Balance values that
are then provided in the Exif data as calculated per
the information I cited previously.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)