K10 white balance

My K10 arrived a couple of days ago, and what a difference to my old DL.

I`m still playing around with it and have noticed a problem with the WB setting. When shooting in tungsten light, the awb setting works as expected, but if I use the preset tungsten setting a heavy blue cast is apparent.

Anyone else had this problem?


Regards
Rick

It depends on the mix of light - if there is any natura;l light in the shot then the Tungsten setting may well look blue. Use Tungsten for subjects wholly lit by tungsten bulbs. This will avoid the heavy red cast that will otherwise result.

Tungsten is outside the working range of AWB, which is why it is provided with a setting of its own.

However, if you want a reddish cast because that is more realistic, then use AWB, Daylight or whatever setting looks right.

In the days of film night shots could be shot with Daylight or Tungsten balanced film, depending on one's taste.

The Tungsten setting doesn't quite suit any of the ordinary light bulbs I've tried it with so far, though I don't get a heavy blue cast. That sounds like you're using it with daylight.

The Tungsten setting can be tuned a bit, or you can use a custom white balance setting, or you can take a manual white balance reading, or you can correct afterwards in post processing. For the latter it helps to take a shot of a white or grey card.

Thanks for the help chaps.

John has correctly identified the problem, I took the shot in mixed light, tungsten and twilight.
Obviously the K10 is more sensitive than my DL as there was not much outside light in the frame.

Regards
Rick

"Tungsten" in this usage refers to photo floods with a tungsten (the metal) element that have a specific colour temperature (3200 K)

Consumer light-bulbs can (and do) vary very greatly in their specified output (anywhere from 2600 K to 3500 K at 110 volts), and if the input voltage on the lamp varies (anywhere from 104 to 121 volts as reported by my UPS), there will be a corresponding difference and/or fluctuation in the colour of the light...

Yes there will be variation, but Tungsten and Photoflood are also as far as I recall two different colour temperatures.

If we want character in our images, then this variation in light sources can be used to advantage and I don't necessarily try to correct it.

This is why most of the time my K10D is set to Daylight and sometimes to Cloudy. As I used to use an 81A filter with colour film this is not too surprising.

For creative use of coloured light, see "Doctor Who" every Saturday evening!

I have just bought a K10d and as an experiment took a couple of test shots with the k10d and with my old Samsung GX 1S.

The shots were taken under the 'energy saving' lights in my kitchen - settings on both cameras were the same (Auto white balance, AV mode, ISO 200, same focal length, camera mounted on tripod in same position) The Samsung produced perfectly acceptable results in terms of white balance whilst the K10d showed a definite yellowish cast.
It seems that the Samsung copes with most situations well on auto white balance - the Pentax less so, is there something that needs setting up on the Pentax ??

I tend to use the "Daylight" setting on the K10D. The reason is that I like to capture the changing colours of light throughout the day and I can't do that if the camera is trying to compensate for it with AWB.

Some of my friends use "Cloudy" which gives warmer results, but personally I think they end up too warm.

Tuesday night on CBC in Montréal.